The biggest show in town

Here's some doodles I made to test out my line of action abilities. It ain't fantastic, but it's better than what I've done before. Huck Hound is a lot of fun.

And now to mess it up:

Inking with a laptop mousepad is a pain and it looks like crap. Maybe I'll reink it if they let us back in school next year.

Graphic Design Q2 Reflection

This quarter, I did a lot of graphic design work. Here are my 3 favorite projects. Make sure you check out my Behance.  https://www.behance.net/furmancolia180

3 Favorite Projects

Probably my favorite project was the event advertising. (click on them) For this project we had to pick an artist, and design a poster, a ticket design (not pictured) and 2 postcards for an event featuring them. I chose Weird Al.  The project took a good while to complete, and I did have some trouble getting everything done due to the large amount of stuff I had to do all on my own. Eventually I did manage to finish it all, and the results turned out well. I also had some technical issues; on the bottom postcard, I used a pathfinder option to group them all together instead of the group tool, which lead to problems that are kinda hard to put into words. I learned how to use the pathfinder tools better during this project. I consulted with the teacher a lot for feedback, and she helped me on making the wall in the poster. My original design for the poster was a lot less interesting, but I decided to go with a design inspired by the poster for Michael Jackson's The Dangerous Tour. Since Al is a parodist, I decided that a parody of another artist, particularly one Al is pretty closely associated with would be fitting. I thought this project was great.




Another great project was the vector portrait. For this project, we had to take a photograph of a living thing, and use a certain technique in Illustrator to make a portrait. This took a while to create, maybe more than the event advertising. This project took forever to make due to the amount of detail I put in. I'm not sure if I learned any skills while making it. I consulted with the teacher again whenever I got stuck, and she helped me a lot.  My original idea had my dog, but his fur didn't have enough colors to be turned into a portrait, so I chose my grandma's dog. I'm really proud of the fur, but the jacket and background could of had more detail.

My last project of the year was designing a personal logo. The clown was not part of the design.  This project took a lot less time to design. I had problems choosing the color palette, and my teacher was kind of persistent on making me choose a lot of different designs. I chose to go with the design on the left. My original design was a cube instead of an arrow, but I couldn't get the top part to look right. I thought this project was a good final project.

Strengths

I am really good at using Photoshop and Illustrator, and I am still very creative. I can communicate with others better now, and I can finish projects while still maintaining a high level of quality relatively quickly. We didn't really collaborate with anyone this year, but I bet I could do that.

Weaknesses

I may need to spend more time on projects, as I might be too fast on some projects. I'm not very good at using InDesign. 

Conclusion

I enjoyed being with Mrs. Beaudoin and working on projects. However I do think that the class was sometimes way too loud, which prevented me from hearing the stuff I wanted to hear. I thought the class was great, and it was one of my favorite classes this year. I think Mrs. Beaudoin should continue doing what she did this year.

1st Semester Final Report

I thought I did good this quarter.  I am very skilled with the tools in Photoshop and Illustrator, and can make a lot of good stuff with it. My blog is still the same as it was last year, but my Behance now exists and has a couple of my projects.

Infographic

I created an infographic in class, probably the best project of this semester. It's all about opinion host Sean Hannity. Unfortunately Blogger is a piece of crap, so I cannot upload it. If you look hard enough, you can find my Behance. It took a couple weeks to make it, but it was worth it. Challenges were drawing the pictures in real life, which for some reason I was required to do. My original idea had a lot more text than photos, but my teacher said I should add more photos, so I made a lot more photos to go along with the text.

Photoshop Challenge

I also took a couple of photos and combined them into a new picture. While not the best of the semester, it was pretty good.

Fortunately, I had previously uploaded this project, so I can show it here. This took probably just a week to make. My favorite part is the camel in the back. Camels are pretty cool. My original idea didn't have the clothes colored, but I decided to make it stand out more, so I used the hue tool to recolor it. 

Time Management

I thought I managed time well. I finished some projects early, so I had a lot of free time. I spent this time working on personal projects, that I should probably post more of. My strengths are probably my experience and skill with Illustrator and Photoshop. I loved working on most projects. If I had to change anything, I would remove the Pop Art project.

Watercolor Transfer

This was a very interesting project. I took 2 of my previous projects and printed them out. Then, I painted 2 pictures with watercolors. After that, I spread ModgePodge on the printed pictures and put them face down on the watercolor picture. A day later, I rubbed off the paper, which was really hard on my finger. A little more rubbing the next day finished the project, and I put the best one on display.

If I could redo the project, I would put more detail in the watercolors. I thought the printed picture transferred well.

Printing Processes

Relief Process

This process does not require a press, it just needs a baren. You take a thin piece of paper, put it on a block with the design you want, rub the baren on it, and the design is transfered. You might need this skill if you can't afford a printing press, or you want a good arm workout.

1.  Get a pattern block.
2.  Get thin paper & a baren.
3.  Cover the design block with ink.
4.  Place paper over block.
5.  Rub baren over paper. Make sure you thoroughly go over every spot.
6.  Lift up paper.

 Intaglio Process

This process has a design under what you're going to put it onto. You might want to use this if you want a deeper cut.

1. Take a steel scribe or any similar tool.
2. Use it to make lines on the surface you're putting your design on.
3. Continue until you've finished your pattern.

Lithography

Lithography involves putting a design on a stone, putting grease on it, wiping off the grease, and putting it on paper. This is useful for people who like stones.

1. Make your design with grease pencils on the stone.
2. Apply printing ink to the stone.
3. Apply gum arabic.
4. Apply acidified gum arabic.
5. Apply another coat of gum arabic.
6. Buff the gum arabic in.
7. Wash it with lithotine
8. Go over the stone with both a wet and dry towel.
9. Put the paper on the stone and transfer. It might take multiple prints.

Pop Art

Here under protest, ANOTHER blog post. For this assignment, we had to take pictures of a partner. Being in a group of 3, I opted out of having pictures taken of me. Nobody really inspired me that much, since most pop art artists from what I understand were morons who think modern art is actually good. Think Judy Funnie from Doug. I chose cool colors because I like those colors. The colors of the shapes in the background were chosen because they look nice together. I used the filter gallery on the subject.

Photoshop Challenge

In Graphic Design we had to photoshop a picture of a man somewhere. I thought "Hey, where's the most remote place he can be?", so I put him in the desert. Originally it was just the original photo in the desert with a camel. However,  that felt too bland, so I added a turban and recolored the jacket. In retrospect the color scheme might be a little weird looking. I used masks to remove the white background and to recolor. The drop shadows are either adjustment layers or mask-related stuff. I thought it turned out pretty good. If I had to redo it I'd add one more thing and recolor the clothes.