What was this project?

For this project, we had to create a gift for an upperclassman in the major we were going for. We had to get to know the person from a distance either over text, zoom, or email. We then needed to find a quote, either from the upperclassman or from reading and the quote had to be something to do with design. After finding our quote we needed to create a gift for our upperclassman that was related to our quote and to our person. The gift could be fully digital but had to have some sort of analog craft to it. It could also be fully analog as long as it was given to our person from a distance.

Where did I start?

To start this project off, I wanted to get to know who I was giving this gift to. My person for this project was Mary Gibson. She is in the major for graphic communications and her dream job is branding or package design. Her favorite colors are Burnt Orange, Light Pink, and sage green. She is passionate about sustainability and likes to compost and upcycle things when she can. her favorite thing about design is how subtle it is. She likes that everything around us had to be designed by somebody to solve some problem, but most of it we never even think about or directly notice. I asked her what’s something she struggles with within the design. She told me that she struggles with getting inspired sometimes and that having constant projects means that you have to constantly be creative. I could relate to this as well. Sometimes it makes you feel burnt out or just at a blank for ideas.

After getting to know Mary a little bit, I needed to find a quote. I ended up reading through the reading The Gift, by Lewis Hyde. My favorite quote from this reading was, “the spirit of an artist’s gifts can wake our own.” I liked this quote because this almost describes design in a way. Designers are always bouncing off each other and ones designers’ spirit or idea can help awaken idea in ourselves. This gave me the idea of giving mary a gift that would help her gain inspiration by things that I have done or things that I find interesting while also keeping it about her. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to deliver the gift at first but I felt that this was a strong idea. I also was sure how to deliver the analog part of the projects until later when I was told that even drawings on digital apps counted. In class, we talked a bit about what others had done for this project. I also looked into what mary did for her project. My favorite project was one where someone used Instagram to give their gift. This gave me the idea to use Instagram as the base of the delivery of my gift.

Concept

My concept for this project is to create a gift for mary that relates to her while also relates to the quote I chose. I want to create a gift that can help him gain inspiration when she needs it. I want to create a gift that gives mary objects and ideas that she can turn into her own. I want to create something that she can come back to every day to gain a little bit more creative energy. For this project, I want to use a mix of all of the elements to give mary more variety for thought. The message I want this gift to give comes from the quote. I want the spirit of this gift to awaken her creative spirit. The tools I will use are, google, ProCreate, Photoshop, Instagram, a spin the wheel website, and illustrator.

Designing the Gift.

To design the gift, it took me a little while to come up with how I wanted to present it. Until I received information about what counts as the analog part of the project. My idea for the delivery of the gift was a drawing that I made from a photograph that I took. I transformed the photo into a drawing to deliver to her. I wanted this drawing to have some meaning to her. Since one of her favorite colors is burnt orange, I decided to integrate that into the image. To create this image I took a picture of my hand holding a paper box that I crafting for a previous project. I then brought it over to Procreate to start drawing. I made a timelapse video of this to help document it. I would then use this image and break it up into 6 different frames and post it on Instagram. Each post on Instagram would be a college where you could slide through and see different images that I would put together for inspiration. This Instagram would consist of these images and a link that would bring to a website to spin a wheel of objects. This wheel is for mary to come back to every day or whenever she needs the inspiration to spin it and get something random to draw. I felt that this was a good way to help boost her creativity.

Creating the wheel was an idea that I got because it is something that I have done before. I used to go on good and search for a random word generator just to find things to draw. When trying to draw, the hardest part for me is always coming up with a theme. This wheel that I created has a few colors that she likes and I hope she enjoys the aesthetic of it. In the middle of the wheel, it has my image of the gift to show that it is part of the gift that I’m giving her. The next part of her gift is all of the inspiration posts on the Instagram account. The first post consists of different branding ideas because her dream job is to be a package design or branding. I gave her a few ideas that she might not have thought of. I know from experience that twitch is a big place for branding. People are always wanting their twitch profile brand to look better while viewers are watching. This would consist of camera overlays, logos, transition screens, and more. Youtube is also big in the same way twitch is with branding. I also gave her some package designs that I thought were very interesting and creative to me. The next post would consist of memes. I put this post is mostly to brighten up her day but also because emotion is a big factor in inspiration. If you feel good, or happy, or even bad, it can spark some type of inspiration. The third post has some quotes that I found inspirational. I also created some of my own. Quotes never really get me hyped up or inspired but for some people, they help. The quotes that I inserted into this post I feel are just good knowledge that anyone can take and apply to themselves. The fourth post is made up of pictures created in ProCreate and illustrator. These pictures are usually very easy and fun to make. In her free time, she can go into illustrator and create her own version of these images. These two apps are also my favorite places to just mess around and get my creative juices flowing. The fifth Post has photography inspiration. Mary mentioned that her favorite gift that she was ever given was the same as mine and that’s her camera. She also says that she hasn’t really kept up with it recently. So I decided to give her a few of my images as well as a few that I found on the internet that I found really nice and easy to do. In the last post, I inserted pictures of some cool DIY projects that she could try because she likes to upcycle. These DIY objects are pretty easy and also have some cool aesthetic to them.

After creating this Instagram account I needed to deliver it to her. I chose to make the account a private account. This would raise some suspense to it and make it more personal to her. I made it so that she was the only one that could see what was posted. To signal that the account was ready for her to receive, I sent her a follow. This would signal to her that I have followed her and she could then follow me back. As soon as she followed me, I accepted and sent her a dm. This dm gave her information on the account and what it was for. She told me that she really enjoyed the meme of the duck and that she was s excited to start drawing from the wheel of objects.

Conclusion

My favorite thing about this project was getting to know the person and being able to create something special for them. It was also fun being able to design something of mine that would be examined by someone above me. For this project, I struggled with inspiration myself. The quote that I ended up choosing applied to me for this project. It was the spirit of someone else’s design that awakened my own idea to do this. I also struggled with the thought of wanting the gift to be perfect. I didn’t want to design something that they didn’t like or didn’t really care for. Once I got over the fact that this was more for me than them it was easy to progress forward. I think if I were to do this project again, I would want to find more things that would help inspire her. I would also want to involve more of my own content and designs. I would also maybe explore a few more websites that could help make my project more interactive. From this project, I learned that sometimes you have to just take your initial instinct and go for it. It might not be the right idea but it can evolve into greater things. I also learned more about how to design something to help a problem. I took the intel that mary gave me and applied it to a design that could help her.

What was this project?

For this project, we needed to create chess pieces with a partner and our pieces need to have related but opposing sides. We first needed to identify the roles of each piece and then as a class, we went through and gave each piece a personality. Then my partner and I brained stormed a few themes that could go well with the pieces as a whole. At the beginning of this project, we had to create checkers pieces as an exercise. This was to help us understand the opposing side aspect of the project. For my checker pieces, I went with a yin and yang theme where when a yin piece would jump over a yang piece, the yang piece would turn black and vice versa.

Identifying each piece

For this project, We first started listing off the chess piece’s roles and what their personalities would be. The pawn is a piece that can only move straight forward unless attacking which then they must attack at a diagonal. At the start, the pawn is allowed to move two spots forward. If the pawn pieces reach the end it can revive another piece. This piece is one of the weakest but comes in the most amount, with 8 on each side of the board. If this piece were a person it would be someone common like a bunch of students or fast-food workers.

The rook piece can move straight forward or side to side as many spaces it wants before being blocked or capturing another piece. This is a piece that can be very powerful and reliable. As a class, we felt that this piece would be someone like a bouncer or security guard because this piece is very reliable and bold. We felt that these pieces would be about 30 years old. This piece would probably be someone big and strong because it is a building.

The knight piece is the piece shaped like a horse. This piece is one that required strategy and is very powerful when used right. It is the only piece that can jump over another unit because of its unique movement. This piece is usually the most detailed unit and is the only piece that you can really tell immediately what it is. I felt that if this piece had a personality it would be very jumpy and reckless. I also felt that this piece would always want to be the center of attention. This unit would be about 25 years old in my opinion.

The bishop piece is a piece on the board that represents a church. This piece is one of the most strategic units in the game. It’s a piece that can win the game in 3 rounds if not careful. It can only move diagonally as many spaces it wants until blocked or it captures another unit. I felt that if this piece had a personality it would be very smart or nerdy. They would be the know it all, of the group. I think this piece would be somewhere around 40 to 50.

The queen piece is the most powerful piece in the game. It can move in any direction as many spaces as it wants until blocked by a unit or it captures a unit. If this piece had a personality, it would be the demanding one that makes all of the moves. This piece would be the one who has to solve all of the problems and gets things done when needed. The queen would always be on the move and be very active. I think that this unit would be about 40 to 50.

The king piece is the most important piece on the boards but is also one of the weakest pieces, right behind the pawn. The only thing keeping it stronger than the pawn is that it can move backward and to the side which the pawn can not. In my opinion, the piece is always hiding and running away from problems letting everyone else take care of them. I think if this piece had a personality, they would be scared and selfish. I think that this unit would be about 60+.

My Concept.

My Concept for this project is to take each piece’s personality and think about how I could turn them into animals. I want to think of the roles of each piece and how they relate to the roles of the animal kingdom. I then want to take the imagery of the chess pieces and reshape them to give the animals a base to stand on. The elements and principles that I want to use are shape, texture, contrast, pattern, and form. The message I want the pieces to display is my thought of the roles of each piece in chess display as animals. I want there to be a royal feeling to the animal theme to keep the normal feeling of chess in the pieces. The materials and tools that I will use for this are bristol, Illustrator, ProCreate, and the laser cutter.

Animals as Chess Pieces.

 

For this project, My partner and I chose to go with animals. I went with jungle animals and my partner went with savannah animals. To start this I thought about the roles of the jungle animals. What animals is the king of the jungle or what is the pawn of the jungle? My immediate thought of the kind of the jungle was a tiger. I thought of this because of the movie, “The Jungle Book.” Thinking of other movies helped me come up with ideas for some of the other pieces. For the bishop piece, because I felt that a snake was a good fit because I felt that snakes very smart and strategic with the way they attack. They also have a different movement unlike many other animals as does the bishop. For the rook, because it is a building, I wanted something big and sturdy. My first thought was a rhino but then I thought about it and rhinos aren’t really jungle animals, so instead, I went with a gorilla. For the queen, I chose to go with a jaguar. I wanted to keep it similar to the king but I didn’t want it to be confused with the king. I also felt that the jaguar’s quick movement was a good fit to go with the queen. The knight piece I was thinking about its movement and how it could jump over pieces. For this piece, I chose a jungle frog. I knew that I wanted to make this the most detailed unit and I also felt that the shape of the frog’s body was similar to the knight piece. Finally for the pawn unit. Since this is the most common unit, I felt that the only good choice I could go with is a monkey. They are rambunctious, not the most dangerous, and pretty common so these were the perfect fit. To start drawing these pieces I looked at pictures of the animals and eye drew them. I Didn’t just want to take silhouettes of the animals off the internet, I wanted it to be my work. When first drawing these animals, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to just have the animals or if I wanted it to look like a chess piece. I started by making a few different views of the animals in case I wanted to make a 3d model of them. Then the idea of making them look like chess pieces popped into my head and so I gave each animal a bass that was similar to their corresponding piece. After drawing each piece, I dragged the drawing page into illustrator to start refining and getting my images ready for the laser cutter. I ended up using the laser cutter machine myself which was a pretty easy process. When I got there all of the settings were already set. All I need to do was take my file and print it.

Crafting

After I was done with the laser cutter all I had left to do was cut out a place for the pieces to connect. I decided that I didn’t want to create a base at the bottom of the piece because I felt like it would be hard with paper rather than doing it with cardboard. I also felt that when I crafted my pieces they stood up pretty when on their own and so a base wasn’t really necessary. I think a few things that would change if I were to craft these again would be to make some adjustments on the tiger because a bit of the paper got cut out from the laser cutter because the detail was too small. To end this project I played a few games of chess. I lost every round but it was still fun.

For this project, we were assigner to craft an infinite flipper book that has 4 scenes that go on forever and come up with a story or series of events that could go with the book. The story that we created needed to be cyclical, meaning that the end of the story would lead back to the beginning of the story. The story would be shown in 4 images so I needed to think of something that goes on forever but in small enough steps that I could show it in these scenes. When first thinking about this project of it repeating over and over again, the word that I thought about was routine. A routine is a sequence of events or actions that are regularly followed. A routine for me is also something we do in gymnastics. It is a series of skills that we do on an event that make up a routine. So my original idea was to think of an infinite story that had something to do with gymnastics. The only problem with this is that I didn’t feel that the ending of the gymnastics story would go with the beginning of the story. The beginning of the story would start with me warming up getting ready to do my routines and the end of the story would have to do with me leaving the gym. So I started to think of something else that was personal to me that was a routine. Then, one day while waking up at 6 am, I thought about how I do almost the same things every single day. I wake up at 6, I go get covid testing and start on school, I go to gym and workout or I go to a competition, then I come home and go to sleep to get ready to do it all over again. So now that I had an idea about what I wanted to make my story about, It was time to figure out how I wanted to display my story. I could draw it onto the flipper, I could draw the scene digitally then print it out to put on the flipper, I could use imagery from the internet to create a scene, or I could take my own pictures with my camera a create my own type of collage for each scene of the flipper.

I started this part of the process by sketching out a few scenes of the story. I started with the scene of waking up at 6 am. In class, Taylor gave us the idea that we could create imagery like a diptych. Using each side of the frame as two different views of the same scene like a comic book. I really preferred this idea rather than just using one image across the whole page. So I started to sketch out a few scenes like this on procreate to see what I thought about it. I felt that the drawing that I produced for this part of the process were very good representations of what I wanted to do but I felt that they weren’t enough. I knew that using color when drawing was my strong suit but I wanted to implement color so I thought about actually recreating the scene with photography, so that what I did.

First I thought about the most important parts of each scene. In the first part of the story, I felt that the most important part was the fact that I was waking up at 6 am. The second part of the scene was about me doing schoolwork. Then the third frame I wanted to show what my original idea was trying to depict. Me getting ready to compete or do my routines. The most important part of the last frame was me going to bed getting ready to wake back up at 6 am. So as I went through the days for the week, I would take images of myself doing what I do every day. To take these images I would set up my camera and tripod and connect to my phone so that I could press a button on my phone and it would take the picture on my camera. Then after taking the pictures I would take them over to Lightroom to change the color and exposure. After that, I would export the images into Procreate to start arranging the images in a format that I liked. I liked the diptych style but I also liked the idea of one image showing different scenes. So, for this, I created a smooth transition through some of the scenes depending on what the image portrayed. The darker images had a smoother transition while the brighter images have more of a hard-line through each scene.

Crafting the flipper was a pretty easy process for the most part. I think the hardest parts about creating the flipper were first remembering the glue patterns and then somehow making the flipper perfect so that it wouldn’t mess up while flipping through it. Most time when crafting the flipper with very careful attention to the edges of the paper when gluing it and the size of each panel, the flipper would still catch onto the other panels when flipping it. Then I also had to add another layer of pictures on top of that so In the end, I do end up with the flipper sometimes catching onto the edges of the paper. I had crafted 4 flippers in total. The first flipper was made out of printer paper and was very frail and ended up tearing after some time. The second flipper I made was out of a thinker material that we use for drawing. This paper I felt was slim enough so that it wasn’t too tough to flip through it but thick enough that it wouldn’t tear and fall apart. The third flipper I made was out of cardstock. This one felt very thick and hard to turn through and when I glued some colors sticky notes to the top of it they ripped while filling through it. Then after gluing all, It started to bend because I only had tacky glue at the time and when I flattened the book the bristol ripped. So I decided to use drawing paper as my main material.

Now that I knew what I was using as my main material it was time to print out my images for the flipper. Originaly for this part of the process, I was a little bit concerned with being able to find a printer. I was able to use the Yunkin Success centers printer but you had to have an appointment to use it and all the time was either being used or was closed and I wouldn’t have been able to complete the images. I was unaware that the union had a printer until I had asked in class where we could print out the images. While you did have to pay to print at the union it was only 50 cents so it was no big deal. After printing out my images all I had to do was construct a flipper, cut the images to size, and glue them only the flipper. The images did come out of the printer a little bit darker than expected but not too dark that you were unable to see what they were. Most of the picture were also meant to be dark because of the time of day. The colors of the images also had to do with the time of day. In the morning the images were more of a purple and light blue because it’s when the sun starts to come out of the darkness making the sky a purplish color. during the day the colors were more bright orange and at night the images were dark blue and red for the night sky and I usually sleep with red led lights on

 

My About Page

For my about page I started out with writing down a few things in my life that are important to me and I think people should know about me. I wanted to write down things that described my life enough without giving away to much information. Then I wrote down a few of my hobbies and talents. This was a very easy process in creating my bio. The next thing I did was really think about why I went into the arts and science field. I wanted to really express my thoughts and feeling about design and what it meant to me. Finally, I did some research on a couple of design fields because I wasn’t really sure about what I wanted out of doing design.

Pictures

After writing down everything I wanted, I needed some pictures to go on my bio. I knew immediately that I wanted pictures that I have taken for my photography and that I wanted them to show my personality. I thought of some of my favorite pictures that show me and my features and that show my style of photography. I also wanted the pictures to be good colors for my page and not too distracting but distracting enough to where it’s aesthetically pleasing.

Layout

Finally, I needed a good layout. this was by far the hardest part of creating my bio. I originally started creating my post with the wrong theme unknowingly, so the layout of my page started up wrong. Then I accidentally deleted my entire post twice because I would accidentally highlight everything and press back. My pictures would delete whenever I would try to mess with them. But at some point, I got the hang of it and I could finally start creating my page. I started by putting in all my writing and giving them titles and a layout that I thought would be good. Then I chose three pictures that I liked and put them in a format that looks aesthetically pleasing to me. Finally, I would go back in forth from editing and previewing making any minor changest i wanted to make for the finished product.

Good vs Bad

For my first project in my design course, I had to create a list of designs that I liked and didn’t like. For this project, I started with brainstorming a few designs I liked. I thought about the quality of the design, the effectiveness of the design, and the aesthetic of the design.  I then brainstormed a few designs that I didn’t like or designs that I thought could be better. After that, I started writing down some of my feeling on the objects that I choose. Finally, I started working on the layout, arranging the pictures and ideas into the layout I wanted.

 

 

 

For this project, we started by taking an initial from our names and them inserting a picture within the negative space. After we created our design we had to send it to the laser cutter to get cut out of bristol paper. For this, I initially started by taking the letter N from my last name. I thought of objects, animals, games, and etc, that I either liked or thought was something that related to me. I started with an eagle. I didn’t think through fully about the laser cutting process and then designed something that had flaws within the design. I had a few parts at the bottom of the N that would get cut out and be unattached to anything so this design would not work. Luckily this was only my first design so I then thought about it some more of what else I could insert into my Initial. I then realized that I am really into PacMan. I have a PacMan background, a PacMan shirt, and a PacMan design all over my room. So, I then designed my initial with Pacman integrated within it. For this design, I decided to turn the letter into a PacMan lane with PacMan and ghosts inside it. This design worked but was still not fully using the objective of the project. I was told that I still needed to use more of the negative space instead of just creating negative space inside the positive space. So, I was back to the drawing board. Finally, I came up with a design only this time I completely changed. I changed my initial letter to K and my subject would be of a penguin upon an iceberg. At this point, it was less about something that I liked, although I do like penguins the idea came to me while watching a national geographic video. This one came easy to me because the negative space of the letter K already looked like an iceberg or a ledge so it wasn’t very hard to create. The point of creating this image was to get used to the laser cutter and understand how it works. It was a pretty easy process but a little bit uncertain with knowing when we would get the cutout back.

Tunnel Book.

For the tunnel book, we first needed to choose a homophone to base our project on. So first we started by brainstorming homophones and thinking about possible images we could create. My first few words were rose, point, wave, and fair. I did sketches on a few of these homophones while for some of these words I could not exactly think about how I could turn it into a drawing. The first word that started sketching was rose. My idea for this was to create a scene that had someone rising up a staircase up to a rose at the top. This was a pretty simple concept that I felt was very boring and unchallenging. I wanted something that was more creative and had less of a chance of someone else using it. While listening to other people’s homophone ideas I felt a few common ones were words like wave, eye/I, and watch so I wanted to stay away from the obvious homophones. I then thought of the word point, as in point at someone and what is the point. This was a word that I felt had an interesting concept but was hard to turn into an image. My only idea was a bunch of arrows pointing at someone unsure of what the point was.  Then I thought of the word fair/fare one being like the carnival and the other meaning a tole. This one was also hard to come up with a concept statement and a sketch that was related to this homophone. Finally, I came up with the homophone break meaning to separate a fixed object or can mean to have an interruption from continuity or uniformity. For this word, my first sketch was of a scene that looked like you were looking on an iPad, and inside was a person on his iPad with apps around him. Then when you were to add light to the image the background was to looked cracked and then he was supposed to look like he was reading a book. I brought this sketch to class to talk to Zach about it. I asked what he thought and if I should stay clear of using words and icons to describe the image. He told me that I should stay away from that and I then understood better what to do. I thought more about what was an experience that I have had or have right now and one thing that I can usually relate things to is gymnastics. I thought of how the word break has related to me and in one way that it has recently is that competitions have just been going and going and I feel like a need a break. I’m also known for breaking ring grips and so I got the idea to have me taking a break from things breaking. I started by drawing in Procreate a scene that looks like a gym with some broken equipment. I then started thinking about ways I could incorporate someone taking a break while it not looking out of place. I tried incorporating a guy floating in a butterfly/crisscross position, which is also a position we use to stretch our bodies, in the background to show him relaxing while drinking some water. I brought this draft into a zoom class and some peers and I also kind of thought that the reveal of the guy would still look a bit off.

Working on the draft.

Some feedback I got from people when they would look at my work is that it was hard to understand that my word was break. I didn’t quite understand because when I first look at it I could realize that all the equipment was broken but I guess to someone who is not a gymnast it might be hard to understand. I tried to find more ways to make the scene look a bit more broken by adding in a few more details to things like the pommel horse but I didn’t really know what to do to make the image look more broken without having issues with the laser cutter. I also heard a lot of people ask about the guy in the middle. They either didn’t know what he was holding or didn’t understand it in general. So I needed something better to showcase taking a break. Usually, when I think of taking a break I think of someone laying down or on a vacation maybe reading a book and listening to music. So, I went onto google and looked up silhouettes of people relaxing or taking a break. I then found one of a guy in a hammock. This one struck my eye because of how the straps on the side of the hammock looked like the wires and lines that I already had inside the composition so I felt that it was more complimentary to the design. After deciding what I was going to do, it was time to start using illustrator. I have had some experience with adobe programs in the past so using illustrator was a pretty simple process and after fully understanding how the laser cutter works after creating my initial design, I felt comfortable with using it for this project. First, I went over all the details inside of Procreate to make sure that everything would work before starting the tracing process in Illustrator. Then, I would go over the outside of each layer with the pen tool making any adjustments I needed to make on the way. After that, I then transformed each layer into an 8×12 composition. I knew that any of the smaller parts would be laser cut correctly because of the small details that the laser cutter could pick up in my Initial design. The only fear I had was transporting the layer from the laser cutter back home. So I made sure to bring a binder with me when I went over to pick it up. This way, when walking home, I could avoid any possible wind moving around thin parts and tearing the paper up.

Crafting.

Now that I had all of the layers to the book it was time to start crafting it together. I started out by measuring out all of the pieces of paper and cardboard that I would need to craft the outside of the book. I needed about 5 different pieces of cardboard and 8 pieces of cardstock just to create the folding part of the book. Two pieces of cardstock and 1 piece of cardboard for the backplate that brings it all together. and then 3 pieces of cardstock paper connected to 2 pieces of cardboard on each side to create the folding sides. These were pretty basic measurements that could have more control over how long I wanted each side to be. After crafting the exterior part of the book I worked on the accordion folding next. This part was a bit harder process. I could get the height of them right but the length part I was struggling with and was wasting too much cardstock on. It took me 3 tried to get it close to what I wanted but I still feel like I could have made it a little bit smaller. after crafting all of the parts of the book I could then start gluing in the layers. I was having trouble getting the layers of the book to stay straight and flat while gluing them. After the layers were glued, they started to bend a little bit. The pieces were already glued stuck so all I could really do was bend it back to its place which worked but I’m not sure what I did wrong while attaching the layers. Now that I have crafted the book I can see a few things that I would change like the bottom part of the layers. I felt the layers were maybe too thin on the bottom and it was kinda ruining the look of the book.  I also think that the length of the book could have been adjusted but other than that I am pretty pleased with the outcome.

What was this project?

For this project we had to make an Interpretive Collage, meaning we had to read a poem and interpret what we read into a group of images and create a collage that uses those images that represented the poem. The poem that I chose for this project out of the three choices we had was the poem names Oranges by Gary Soto. I chose this poem because of the contrast I could feel reading it. While reading the poem everything felt old fashion and low saturated but I could see the orange as a stand-out object. The orange felt a little bit random in the poem but it also felt like it was meant to be there and when thinking about this poem as an image it felt the same way.

Where did I start?

For this project, I started by reading the poem a couple of times to find keywords that stood out to me that I could find images for. For part one of this project, we had to find at least 10 images that we felt worked with this poem. So while reading the poem I would find keywords that I thought stood out to me and tried to find images that I thought matched what I had in my head. A few of the phrases that stood out to me were ones like, “The lady’s eyes met mine,” and, “I took the

nickel from My pocket, then an orange.” I then found a picture of an eye, a nickel, and an orange. After finding at least 10 pictures and citing them, I had to then mask them out in photoshop to prepare to start creating my collage. But, before I started creating my first collage we had an exercise in class to start practicing using photoshop and get a better understanding of what we were doing. In class, we were given 4 words that we had to find pictures and then create a collage out of. The 4 words I was given were belt, truck, boombox, and keychain. With these words, I created a collage that had a lot of form to it and it felt like an actual space. I liked the outcome of this image but I didn’t think this is what I wanted my project to look like. I wanted it to be more together and harmonious. So, I started taking all the images from this collage and bringing them more together. I started taking my images and using line and harmony and began to create something that looked a bit more like what I was wanting.

 

Start Creating.

To start creating the Final project I first needed to clean up my cut-out images. This wasn’t a very hard process, it was a little tedious but pretty easy to do. I then started placing the images in areas until I got something that felt appealing and harmonious to me. I created something that looked like a Mandal but out of images. An image with some radial symmetry and harmony. I used symmetry by placing some of the images more than once on the opposing side so that the collage looked symmetrical. Before creating the outer area of the collage. I needed a center focus if I was going to do an image that looked like a mandala. So, I chose an eye because people naturally are drawn to look for faces, and using the eye people are drawn to look at it. I then worked outwards from there. I placed the nickel, the orange, and the chocolate behind the eye because all the boy had in his pocket was the orange and Nickle and he showed the merchant who of which made eye contact with him after he placed these objects on the counter, he then received the chocolate from the kind person. I then placed the snow behind that because of the cold weather outside. The image then contains two hands holding an orange not only representing the boy taking the orange out of his pocket and showing it but also because the boy and girl hold hands in the poem. The image of the hands in front of the fire represents the end of the poem when the boy was pealing his orange and it said that the orange was so bright that it looked as if he was making a fire in his hands. This part of the poem is also what made me want to make a black and white picture but leaving the orange saturated. The orange is bright and stands out in the picture as it sounds it does in the poem. I then added a few more pictures that helped add content that might not have been as much of a key to the poem but were still apart of it. The pictures I am talking about are the car, the frost, and the dogs barking. These things added elements like sound, texture and, the movement to the poem so I felt they were still important to add.  Then, I played around with some background colors that I felt complimented the composition. Finally, I had a rough draft of what I wanted to do. I thought this looked good but I felt like it was missing something. So, I took a break and sent a slack message to Taylor asking a very carefully thought question. I didn’t want too much of a direction from him on where to go because I felt like it would then be less of my own work but just a few ideas and things to think about when creating. Taylor gave me some tips like maybe using some shadow to add some depts into it and that tip alone helped me so much create something more like What I wanted.

 

Getting To My Final Product

After taking account of the comments that Taylor gave me I started to add detail to what I had. I added a background shadow to almost all of the images and this gave a lot of depth to it bringing more attention to things like the eye, oranges, and the snowball. Even after adding these details it still felt a bit empty. There was just too much empty space around the image. I went and looked at a few examples of collages and found a few that I really liked. I had already really liked a few of Taylor’s collages. I felt he did a really good job at using up space and giving it a purpose or using the negative space as a way to compliment the positive space. I decided to find a few more images to use for the upper and lower part of my college and use elements like line, shape, and color to help fill up and compliment the rest of the image. These few things really brought the whole image together and then all I had left to do was clean up the pictures, shadows, and colors, and I was pretty much done with this collage.

After creating this collage I wanted to make sure this is what I wanted to do. I decided to make another collage using more of a scene type of look now that I felt more comfortable using photoshop and had an even greater understanding of what I was doing. So I started to create a college using the scene inside of an old drugstore. All I did for this collage was take the images and some of the same principles that I had already used previously and giving it a different perspective. All through the outcome of this collage wasn’t really my favorite it did give me an assurance that I did want to commit to the collage that I previously made. It also gave me a bit more experience and time to work with photoshop.

End Conclusions

All in all, this was a very different but very fun project. There was not too much technical struggle with this project other than photoshop sometimes acting a little slow when working on it for too long. I really enjoyed this project because of how I got to watch how everyone else interpreted some of the same poems and what was going on to them and how I felt like I got to use a bit more of my creative side because of how limitless your creativity can be using photoshop. I learned better how to take words and transform them into an image which is something that I have struggled with. This project also gave me some more experience with using color even though I took an easier approach to it using black and white. I think if i were to do this project again I would maybe try out interpreting other poems and trying out different collage themes.

What Was This Project?

For this project, we were focusing on color working with different color schemes, principles, and color tools. While working with colors we needed to come up with 2 color schemes to go with our mandalas. Color can be a difficult thing to work with and in my case when needed to use colors with a purpose and not just colors that look good together, this project was more difficult for me.

What Did I Do?

For this project first I played around with the placement of colors and different strategies of importing color into my mandala. My first method was in Procreate. What I did was import my mandala from illustrator and started to color behind it. Procreate is a raster-based program so I knew that there was going to be some complications when creating the final projects. My first complications were after placing color, importing it into illustrator was hard because the colors would not line up with the vector lines so you could see the rasterized pixels. So, I had to go over it again in illustrator which was a very tedious process. luckily you could only see pixels on the edges of the color and not in the middle so it wasn’t too difficult to do this. I found that illustrator was much harder on the iPad because I did not have key binds to quickly change tools. So, I instead used illustrator on a computer and this was a much smoother process. I think that I am going to purchase a drawing tablet for computers to make future projects an even easier process. Anyways, for the First mandala I created, I didn’t have a color scheme. I basically took every color in the rainbow and created a faded color wheel mandala. For my second mandala, I took pictures of a hummingbird and of a flower field and took colors from them to create it. For this mandala, There were too many colors and it was very distracting. When I presented my first two mandalas to the zoom class, many people gave me positive comments about them but I was still not sure I was getting the point of this project. So I asked Zach about it and he thought the same thing. He told me basically what I already knew but pointed me in a better direction.

Where Did I Do Next?

Now, after taking a look at a few people’s ideas and talking more about color schemes, tools, and principles I started to create something with more of a purpose. For my first mandala, I used a split-complementary color scheme using orange, green, and blue. The orange was an inspiration from a picture of an orange hummingbird that I really liked. The blue and green are to represent the nature colors of the sky and grass. I chose to go with split complementary because I felt it was the most difficult one because to me it is one of the more unpleasant looking color schemes. Most paintings using split complementary colors are not as pleasant to the eye and so I wanted to try it. I feel for this mandala I should have upped the red value in the orange because it does not really stand out to me very much, but I do not find it unpleasant. I felt that the placement of the colors was good though because it complements and follows the lines of the mandala. This mandala I fully created in illustrator so I could avoid any rasterized lines. I tried this method on my iPad at first until my app started to freeze and shut down every time I selected a line. Luckily my account was linked to my computer so I could just start where I left off.

 

For the second mandala, I chose to use an Analogous color scheme using orange, through red. I used these warm colors because hummingbirds are birds that like the warm weather and my mandala looks more summer-themed than winter. Because of the flowers, trees, and the sun, I felt these colors complimented the drawing rather than if I drew snowflakes, pine trees, and mountains that these colors would not make sense. I would then use colors like light blue to purple making it feel darker and colder. I made some of the areas in this mandala while because I felt that it helped give the mandala depth. The white areas make it look like the eye is coming closer to you. Not only that but if I were to make the whole thing the same it would have looked quite boring. I did this Mandal mostly on procreate. I took my colors and I spread them out onto the Mandal. Then I took the blue tool inside of procreate and blended them together. After that, I imported the color into illustrator to clean up any areas that didn’t line up and clean the edges. This was a much easier process because I wasn’t trying to put colors in specific places. I just wanted the color to expand from the middle outwards. The only part that took a little time was erasing so I could have a white background in the middle area.

Finally.

To turn this project in, First, I imported everything into word because it supports vector-based apps. Then, I needed to write 250 words describing my composition. I also needed to provide my color charts with provided schemes. After importing all of this into word and making it look presentable table I made sure to save it as a pdf so that the vector lines would not rasterize and I turned it in as my last project in Design 2110.

What was this project?

For this project, we were focusing on radial symmetry and creating a mandala that was inspired by something natural and something man-made. We needed to take these inspirations and simplify them into shapes that we could use for our mandala focusing on line, shape, texture, rhythm/repetition, movement, symmetry and asymmetry, and scale.

For this project I first needed to chose what manmade and what natural thing I wanted to use for this mandala. I decided on my manmade object first and was inspired by my computer. Inside my computer had a bunch of parts in it like a processor, fans, and cables. I also use a keyboard and mouse witch I wanted to try to implement into my mandala. After thinking of these objects I thought of other electric themed objects like transmission towers and power outlets. For my natural themed mandala, it took me a little bit longer to figure out what I wanted to do. I tried a plant themed mandala, I tried making a mandala and getting inspiration as I went on but I knew if I did that then I wouldn’t have much reason for why I chose to do that mandala. So as I was coming up with objects to go in my manmade inspired mandala I noticed how there were always birds sitting on the power lines of the electric posts and I forgot that an animal was a natural thing. So I went and started looking at pictures of birds. I think the main reason I chose a hummingbird rather than something else is just that it was the first bird that caught my eye because the colors, textures, and detail I noticed in the close-up picture really inspired me to use this bird.

How Did I Start?

Before I was set on what objects I was using for my mandalas I started by just learning how to use Adobe Illustrator. I watched the videos giving to me by the teachers and I also did some of my own research on youtube on illustrator and creating mandalas. Since a lot of people were having trouble with using illustrator I couldn’t really ask any of the other classmates any questions on how they might have done things on it. I could have asked the professors questions on it but I just found it easier to look up any problems I had on youtube. I looked up things on the radial symmetry tool, I watched videos of people creating their own mandalas and this really helped me prepare for creating my mandala.

The first thing I did to start creating was to gather all my pictures of inspirations and objects and start simplifying them and creating simple sketches of them. I used the pattern process template idea that the professors gave us and tried to create a few different versions of each sketch I had. There are some things that are in my mandala that I do not have sketches of because sometimes things would come to me as I was creating my mandala. I also don’t have every abstraction in my final mandala because some things I felt could be left out or didn’t fit. After creating some abstractions I started messing around with Illustrator just putting my abstractions in different areas until I got something that I liked. For the natural mandala, I created a mandala that I felt was too simple for an analog mandala. I didn’t have to worry about recreating it yet I was still holding back on it. Earlier in the process, I created a mandala with a lot of detail and wondered why I wasn’t creating something like that since I could. So I started over, using some of the details that I used before and liked but just doing more with them. I realized that I did not personally like it with shading with different grays but I wanted it to look shaded. So by making some areas denser and others more open it created areas that looked shades like cross-hatching. In the end, I got a little carried away and too focused on making it super detailed and I was trying to use up as much space as I could and I created these flowers on the ends of it. I felt that they were too distracting and so I asked the professor his opinion on it and he pretty much said the same thing. So I simply got rid of them and tried putting small grass pedals around it and called it done after that. I feel like in the end, this mandala felt harmonious because everything works together in creating this eye-appealing creation but I also felt like it was using emphasis because of the eye in the middle and everything was leading into that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For my manmade mandala, I felt like I had the right idea and a good amount of detail to it without it being too hard to recreate on paper. My original mandala for this I thought was pretty good but there were some things that didn’t really make sense to me and were bothering me so I decided to make a new one. The reason the first one didn’t make sense to me was that I had multiple processors around the outside and in a normal computer there is only one processor. It is called the CPU( central processing unit) because it is the central component that processes the computer so I wanted it in the middle of the mandala making it the CMPU( central mandala processing unit). I felt that this was a good idea because first, it gave the Mandala viewpoint towards the center making it feel more harmonious rather than before it felt more like movement. After creating my second manmade mandala I felt like the fans didn’t really fit but I still felt like the outside needed something to it. I didn’t really know how to add keys from a keyboard onto my mandala because I wasn’t sure about the letters so I just made them black bars. I felt like this did enough without it being too random and out of place. When drawing out my analog version I did make a mistake in drawing a lightning bolt in the wrong area so I had to add more around the entire mandala but it didn’t change the look of it too much. I found it better to draw the mandala when I wasn’t tired at all and could focus on everything I was doing but near the end of drawing it, I was getting a little tired and made a few more mistakes than I would have if I was fully awake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other Mandalas.

othe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Practice and Warm Up.

Part 1

For part one of this project, I had to brainstorm what I wanted to do for my final. I thought this project could be fun because I get to kinda express myself in it. Before starting this project I went through a day analyzing how I dealt with problems that I faced. I realized that for some problems I am calm but a lot of the time my brain is scattered I react fast and sometimes I’m just uncertain of what to do. So I created a web with 4 words( scattered, fast, uncertain, calm). Then, I thought of some images in my head that might come to mind when thinking about these words. When I thought of scattered I thought of random things or unfocused on one thing. When I thought of fast I thought of sharp edges, zigzags, and spikes. For uncertain I thought of fuzzy shapes, blank shapes, and dark areas. For calm I thought of things that come together, the shapes flow, and are still. Now after thinking of some words I needed to actually create 50 of these shapes. What sounded to be easy ended up taking me longer than expected. It was hard for me to feel like some of the shapes I was making were showcasing these emotions. For some shapes, I tried scribbling and then erasing the center. I tried making more complex abstract shapes which ended up being my favorite ones in the end. I also tried gaining inspiration from other things like a yin yang sign, a spike ball, and the infinite triangle. I think in the end I have at least 5 shapes to work with for my final drawing.

What do I need to do before the final?

Before the final, I need to work on some drafts for the shoulders and headspace of my final. I need to think about what angle I want to try to tackle if not try all of them and the shapes of the body.

I also need to learn how I want my drawing to be colored. What colors do I want to use? Do I want it to look realistic or do I want to exaggerate my colors with my shapes? These are a few things I need to think of before the final project but I am very excited to see the outcome.

Final Process.

For the final process, I first needed to decide what shapes I needed.  What were the first shapes that stood out to me? What shapes felt like the emotions, feelings, and thoughts that are in my head. the first emotions were scattered. The shape that caught my eye when thinking about scatters was the shape that starts together on one side and on the opposite side scatters out in different directions. This shape made me think of how sometimes when people talk to me it goes in one ear and out the other so I put it close to the middle of my head where my ears would be. This shape is what I based where everything else was. In my practice drawings and in my final I started with this shape. In one of my practice drawings, I tried changing the shapes but I thought my original shape was the best version of it. For the feeling fast I thought of something with sharp edges. I chose two shapes for this word. My first shape was the ball with spikes coming out of it and the second shape was very sharp and abstract. For the ball with spikes, it is placed towards the middle of my head because I feel like I am pretty sharp-minded. I reacted to things quickly and with mindfulness. For the abstract shape, I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted it. Originally I had it at the top of my head to display the same sort of feeling the ball did but because it was the last shape I placed for the final I put it near the bottom of my face. For some of the shapes, the reasoning for why I place them where they are places are unanswerable. I forgot that the final was due and I ended up drawing it the day before the due date. I was told that I could upload it a few days later and it would only be 5 points off but I felt it would be better for me to nock this assignment out because of other long assignments I had due. My fourth shape was of the infinity triangle. This shape represented uncertainty and calmness because when people look at the shape they can sometimes be uncertain of the direction of the triangle, and calmness because of how smoothly it transitions from each twist and turn it looks to have. My fifth shape was one that looked like two triangles were being pulled apart. This shape represented calm because the stretched-out part felt slow and flowy and fast just because it was sharp on the edges.

Practice models.

For these practice models I was mostly just trying to come up with an outcome I might like. I was looking for where I wanted the shapes to be placed. whether I wanted them to be in front of behind other shapes. How I wanted them shaded and overall just experimenting and gaining experience drawing these figures. I drew these practice models before I had my final shapes just to see if I liked them in the portrait or not. For the first one, I messed around with the background of the shapes and a few shapes I felt were good contestants but didn’t make it into the final. For the second model, I was messing with the placement of the shapes. making the shapes denser to give less open space. A few of the shapes in the second model I did not have in my original 50 shapes so I didn’t feel like I should go too much into this drawing. What I gained from the second drawing was the placement of the scatters shape. It felt like it was the right place for it in the middle of the head. For the first model, I liked the shaded background. I gave off a vibe like everything was floating out of the neck.

For my color choice, I didn’t have much time to chose colors so I searched up on google “chaotic color scheme” and went with the first choice that caught my eye. I felt that this wasn’t the worst thing I could do because sometimes you are just given colors and you have to work with what you are given. I felt that if I didn’t do this, I would get too overwhelmed with colors and the outcome wouldn’t feel right. I really liked working with the darker reds because they reminded me of the nether in Minecraft. Sometimes my brain does feel dark and scary like the nether so I felt this was a good choice. as for the color orange I liked how I used it because I only used a small about of it but because of how bright it is, it really pops out. I also chose to leave a few of the colors grey. I’m not really sure why I did this but I guess you could say that’s a good reason to why I left them. A lot of times there is this grey area in my head where I just blank out and can’t think of words. I start stuttering and I can’t think of the simplest things. So leaving the shapes grey was kinda appropriate.

The Final Drawing.

 

I am very happy with my final outcome. For not having much time in the end to create it, I felt that it was exactly what I had planned in my head. It feels scattered, fast, calm, and a little bit of uncertain. While having all of these chaotic feelings, it is all being held together by this spiraling form and the orange floating bars because it all works together. Even though these emotions and this drawing look chaotic, it is all harmonized and together. In the middle is a small orange dot, and thought not placed in the middle of my actual face, it is almost the center of attention. I feel that this small dot represents me the most because even with all this crazy stuff around it, it all comes back to the center representing me. I really love how all the colors compliment each other and how the picture kinda looks like it is moving because of the twisting spirals. Some of the shapes in the portrait have no real meaning besides being fillers but they still help bring the picture together. What took me the most time was the shading and the placement. There was a lot of erasing parts of the shapes to make them appear in front of behind and sometimes the placement would look a bit off and I would have to redo it. The shading wasn’t really hard but it was the most tedious.

Other process points.

Somethings in the process I tried were not as helpful as I might have hoped. For example, the facial expression wasn’t helping me too much with this drawing because I felt I was going to put shapes in places regardless of what face I made. Also the shape drawing of the face for the same reason. I felt like it helped me determine where to place stuff but not because of the facial expression. If I were to do this projected again I thought I would play around with another still of placement of the shapes. I might try something where the shapes were more stuck together or maybe somethings were part of my face in the portrait. I would also mess around with different types of shapes. Maybe more fluid shapes or more abstract shapes. After seeing others’ work it gave me a lot of ideas for what I could have done for this project but I am very happy with my outcome.