Mashup Process

Research

Font Exercise

For this exercise, I was told to choose 5 different fonts that represent me or ones that I relate to. I hate the idea of being basic and having my works lo ok exactly like the rest of the class. I knew I had an advantage with an outside app and I picked out the craziest fonts I could find that still related to me.

 

Name/ Initial Exercise

After the font exercise, we were left to discuss with the table and choose one font that was our favorite. I have very many different aspects of myself that I see reflected in all 5 of these fonts so I actually combined pieces from each of the choices to construct my name. After that, we had to send the name into Illustrator and extrude it in an isometric grid.

 

30 Mashup Words

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For this we had to combine 30 words made up of nouns and verbs/adj in our own way. Then, from that list, we chose our favorite word and made up a definition for it.

Final Mashup Deliverable

The final objective was to extrude your word in an isometric grid and in your font and illustrate the definition in the way you manipulate the word and its surroundings. I mixed in other textures because I wanted it to have some essence of realism.

 

Iterations and Production

I chose these fonts because I saw myself reflected into all of them and I was fixed on being different than everyone else. I tried out my name on each of the fonts but I wasnt really liking any of them.

Since I didn’t like my name in any of the fonts but I still liked each font individually, I combined my favorite letter from each of the fonts to form my name. I didn’t do my initials because it wouldn’t show off my fonts as well. The upside down A represents the crazy part and the normal upper case B’s show a normal, presentable side. Then backwards 3 matches with the randomness of the A and the y is normal but a bigger sized lowercase size than the B’s. It’s normal but still stands out from the rest of the letters.

I chose the word Bcharkmas because it sounded the weirdest but you could still guess what works make it up. The definition was a mix of of the definition of bark and Christmas, using both version of the word bark. I chose 2 definition instead of 1 because I couldn’t decide which one I liked better and most dictionaries include more than 1 definition.

This project took very long as I was working in an iPad and many features are not supported as they are on a laptop, but unfortunately I was out of luck with my laptop breaking down only a few weeks ago. This causes a lot of wasted time as there is no extrusion tool in iPad so I had to manually draw each line connecting the front and the back and filling in each empty space with different values of the same color. Another part that was difficult to get through was the limitation of only 4 colors. I realized we could only use 4 colors about halfway through the project and I became very discouraged because I had already picked out many appealing colors to match my theme. My creativity was lessened by this realization but I still carried on.

This was my new color palette after I saw the restrictions and I chose primary colors so that I could potentially mix them in the gradient tool to create any color in the rainbow and be less limited. I dint end up doing that because soon after working with these new colors, I realized they fit my theme already, with a few alterations on opacity and darkness. I thought my piece would look very boring, repeating the same colors but I was wrong as it looks bright and full of color.

My favorite letter is the middle A because it took the longest to get perfect and its the center of the piece and all attention is brought to it first. I also enjoy looking at the layers of pine needs, they look very aesthetic and it came together very nicely. Furthermore, it’s one of the key aspects to show the definition. Taylor first gave me the recommendation of enlarging it, to emphasis the amount of detail I put into it and to set it apart from the rest of the letters, adding importance to it. Taylor also gave me a suggestion that I really liked, where he told me to maybe make the rest of the letters as little presents underneath the tree. I took his advice but only make a couple of the letter look like presents, because I wanted to show more elements of Christmas as well. The hole for the A shows an under layer of the tree, showing the bark. This was a last minute edition as I realized I gave myself more work than everyone else and I needed to include both definitions. For the star, I added a gradient circle underneath the shape itself where the inner color was yellow and the outer color was completely transparent so it would blend better and I love the glow effect it gives.

The idea to add fallen snow on top of the letters was one of my best and I spent a lot of time to make it look good and shade it correctly for each letter. I like the winter effect it gave and some people said it reminded them of club penguin, which I found funny and I’m happy to hear that my style looks similar to theirs. This however, contradicted with Taylors idea to make all the little letters look like presents because I could have a bow and snow both on top of a letter, it would be too crowded.

This was to show the second definition of Bcharkmas, the sacred Christmas dog. I wanted it to fit the cutesy theme I had going so I didnt show an audible bark and I tried to add as many dog-ish elements as I could with it still being minimalistic and still being able to understand what letter it was. In hindsight, I should’ve given more thought to my definitions and better ways to show them but I was so focused on the Christmas theme, I just got caught up with everything else.

This was one of the last elements I added and the idea came to me the day before the final because I was making cookies with my friends and I forgot that cookies were part of christmas. I was initially going to add a snow layer on top of it but this idea came to me at the perfect time. It looks especially good next to the tree, just like cookies for Santa.


These are the textured pieces that I added to make the piece feel more real and not all cartoon. They were all made in an outside app that ive used for many many years and this app could offer things that Illustrator could never imagine. The glitter bows are self explanatory as christmas bows are shiny and sparkly. I added them on the B and M because they draw attention and the B should definitely have attention brought to it because it is the beginning letter and I thought it was being a bit overshadowed by the A tree. The M just deserved a topper to complete the ribbon look and I used silver and gold because of the classic christmas song “silver and gold”. The carpet is a bit of a longer explanation. For my family, we do Christmas on the floor, like opening gifts in our carpeted living room and so every Christmas for me holds the memory and feel of our shag carpet. The carpet color also matches the one I have at home so this addition was very personal to me and I felt it was necessary to include the textured appearance instead of hand drawing it.

 

All and all, for the amount of effort I put into this project, it came out looking amazing. Although, I know if I was working on a laptop, I could’ve done so much more but I’ve learned to work with what I have. I chose to draw my own font instead of following the previous exercise because I like doing everything myself and I like how its original and no one else could’ve copied my font. My piece is incredibly detailed from all the time and work I put into it and I did this because I was very sick and tired of our abstraction project from Design Foundations 2110 so I added as much detail as possible to balance out the anger I held from abstraction. This project was very fun to draw and I enjoyed myself throughout the whole process. Drawing things like this is calming to me and it doesn’t cause me stress because its very similar to what I used to do in high school when I was bored or trying to keep myself awake by focusing my attention on drawing or doodling. This also helped me solidify my own style and what that looks like.

Concept Statement

I knew I wanted to really show Christmas spirit but then I went a little overboard. My initial dream was to make some of the letters brown with the texture of bark on the side but I ended up not doing that after I heard Taylors recommendation and followed that instead. After that, I followed the idea of Christmas and all the things that make up Christmas. I wanted bright colors to show how vibrate and exciting this time of year is and also added a comfortable, homey feel with the shag carpet. I still managed to add some hints of the definition that fit in with christmas elements and I knew I wanted it to all be the same theme and it did. It came out much better than I imagined when I started and I’m glad I made all these decisions along the way.

Mashup

Space and Time Walk Process

Research

https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Oval/@39.9993666,-83.0135217,545m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x88388ebe583f917b:0xd267c072f6a429bb!8m2!3d39.9994979!4d-83.012709!5m2!1e3!1e4

Google Maps University Area

 

Exercises/ Activities

Writing

Our directions to get to the destination including sensory details

 

Pictures

Pictures of our journey from Hayes to the destination

 

Final map

Iterations and Production

We started with a scavenger hunt leading to the map room at Thompson Library. I enjoyed this exercise because I like scavenger hunts and it was fun to follow the clues without any visual hints. When I and my group finally found the map room, we took pictures of what looked interesting to us, and here is where I got my idea started for what I wanted my map to look like. I liked the old maps with pictures of dragons and such, filled with color. I knew my map wouldn’t be this big, but I still liked the idea. After that, I found some county maps, and my vision got refined down to a smaller scale. In another book about the history of New York, I read about the revolution in the Hamilton period and as they were describing the order of events, they had a small little map of the peninsula with paths leading over and around it to show where each army and battle was located. I noticed small details, like the simple tree symbols and condensed squares to represent small towns. I liked these small symbols and I knew that I wanted something like that map in New York.

 


The next exercise we did was instructional drawing. We made specific steps and symbols to help the drawer reconstruct Sponge-bobs house. these instructions were so specific, as they included inch measurements and angles of lines. I didn’t want my directions to follow the specificity of this exercise so I dumbed down my instruction to strictly sensory words, nothing like “take 3 steps back” because that is unnecessary to me. This instructional drawing exercise was enjoyable too. When we traded with other groups we got good feedback on how we should be more specific with the placement and location of the symbols. I liked how we were being tested to do things without seeing them, only words.

 

The texture exercise was one of my favorites because I liked drawing small things with high detail so they look as realistic as possible. This helped me visually see the difference and the change from complete black shadow to pure white and better understand values. This kind of helped me with experimenting with different textures like if I wanted to add shadows in my map or texture to the grass. I decided not to do any of that but this was still fun.

 

After all that, I finally began the process of making my map. I chose my location and how wide I was making the boundaries and from that point, I knew this was going to be a long process for me. My area was very large and it would be really hard to just look at it then try to recreate it directly on the paper with no grid or anything. I’ve always been good at digitized recreations so I thought that would be a good place to start. For my area, I chose to focus on the oval and north oval and cut it off around Neil Ave, W 12th Ave, College Road S, and Annie and John Glenn Ave. These cutoff roads created a nice rectangular shape for my map and it was pleasing to my eye.

 

 

This was the process of recreating the map digitally before transferring onto the paper.  My original plan was to copy this part of the map that I wanted, including all the detail of each building and the shape of each tree, not simplifying anything. From there I was going to find a way to scale it up to the size of my 17 x 14 paper and use the light table to trace it from there. Doing this, I avoided the possibility of mistake or misplacement of any buildings or alteration to my map. My title, key, and directions were all last-minute thoughts to the map.

Once I finished my final digital map, I chose some banners and borders to try and set a theme for my paper. I switched the middle of each oval into a compass because, in my directions, I refer to the oval as a compass because of all the paths that emerge from one point, the point of the compass. I liked the idea of a subtle compass theme, maybe old tarnished nautical vibes. From that, I looked for an old ripped paper template, the kind you would find a treasure map on, and I wanted my key to be on that.

 

 

Since I was still working digitally, I shaped and scaled this paper until it was in the size and location I wanted it to be and copied a similar version overtop that would soon be on the final paper. My title was just written on a simple banner because I didn’t want to overcomplicate things. I also played around with some fonts until I found some that matched my nautical theme. I didn’t finish the entire map digitally, I left some blank space for my directions and to figure that out on paper. I had a small thought for the directions and I liked the idea of rope to match the theme so you can see how I manipulated that to fit in the final.

 

 

 

I did have some trouble trying to scale the map from digital to paper because I didn’t know the original scale of the digital board and I couldn’t compare it to the 17×14. I had to move my project to Illustrator from Sketchbook because Sketchbook doesn’t do measurements. I learned from Illustrator the size of my board and I scaled it from there and I just had to divide the board into sections that equal the size of a piece of printer paper. I ended up with 3 papers, horizontally and vertically and I transferred that to a printer nearby and once I had the pages, I matched them up to make sure they were perfect. There was a slight alteration where the bottom block of the map was too long and didn’t match up with the top of the map. I don’t know how this happened but I just cut a sliver out from the middle and forced it to match up again. I also give myself room to overlap each page to get the most accurate tracing. For the actual tracing, I used a 0.3 point pen for the buildings and 0.5 for the trees.

Transferring digital map onto 17×14 Bristol paper

I was met with frustration when I discovered we could only use one color because I really like bright colors and combining them to create a tone or mood. I didn’t accept this to I decided to challenge this restriction by making a proposal. If I chose one color, like beige, and darkened it using only the white and black slider, nothing else changed, I would make brown. If I did the same thing but lightened it, I would make a light cream color. So, technically, I still used the same color to make two new colors. I brought my proposition to Taylor and basically annoyed him into submission where he allowed me to use these alterations of one color. I was very excited about my success and I went to work right away because I had so many more opportunities to experiment.

 

My original plan was to use colored pencils in brown scale but I didn’t have those so I used watercolors instead. This was actually better because they weren’t super opaque and you could still see the outlines of the trees underneath the color. I did overlap in some places so I did have to redraw some lines but nothing unexpected. In the end, I’m really glad I chose beige as my color because I am obsessed with brown and it matched my theme close enough, especially when coloring the key paper, which worked much better than I expected. I also didn’t want to be basic and choose green because I knew everyone else was choosing either green for the grass or red for the trail. My piece definitely stands out, just as I intended. In the end, I love what I did and I’m glad I put so much time into this because it was definitely worth it. If I had more time to improve, I may have been more precise when painting, making sure to stay inside the outlines to avoid having to fix it later. I maybe would have used a different color of paper but I wasn’t 100% on my brown color theme until about halfway through, and after that came the nautical theme. I maybe could’ve soaked my Bristol paper in some coffee water to tint it beige, making it look older, and I could’ve burnt and torn some edges to make it look like a pirates map like some other people did. Still, I love my final.

 

Space and Time Walk

Perspective Studio Space Process

Research

https://notability.com/n/esWp2sHC5ruDnSpqnyKB4

Research of dimensions and designs of furniture

 

Exercises

 

Planes, Curves, Layering Exercise

This exercise was designed to teach us about perspective and introductions the concept of 2D and 3D objects in space. This was one of the earliest exercises and it was used to transition us into being comfortable experimenting with uncomfortable objects that bend, curve, and fold onto itself. I really liked this exercise because there weren’t a lot of limitations to it and I could draw whatever I wanted like banners and title headers. I also played around with stairs because he suggested it and doing that helped me in the future when I added stairs into my room. Taylor also gave me feedback on my shadows and direction. This showed me basic structures that would add up to more complex compositions, like spheres and curved objects.

 

 

Two Point Perspective Exercise

For this exercise, we practiced drawing perspective from a horizon line. We were instructed to draw multiple shapes, squares, cylinders, and wedges. Practicing this helped show me how shapes can look so different based on their perspective in relation to the horizon line, showing with side would be shown: the top, the side, or the bottom. This was helpful to remember in the final when I was looking over my sketch for one of the last times, to make sure all my objects followed the rules of perspective to the horizon line. If one line was slightly off, or showed the wrong side, it was noticeable and I could fix it. This especially helped in the corners of my room. Most of the guidelines from the original grid lines helped me form my outline shape but this practice helped me understand what each side would look like and how much of it would be shown to the viewer. Taylor also gave me feedback and complimented how neat all my shapes looked, which started my quest for perfection on this final project.

 

Triangulation Practice

Taylor told us to construct our own 8×8 grid, complete with a vanishing point and horizon line. We only drew two sides on the room because this wasn’t a complicated exercise. The floor grid helped me visualize space and volume and the wall grid helped me visualize depth and height. This exercise greatly helped me in my process to the final because if I knew my dimensions of the grid, (1’ unit squares) and I knew the measurements of my objects (he told us to label dimensions in our mood boards) then I could build my room proportional to a real human being. During our critiquing process, I noticed how some people just guessed on the height and length of some objects and once you took a closer look, they looked odd : too short or too wide. As for me, I was very thorough when finding and measuring my dimensions of my furniture in accordance to the dimensions of my room. I wanted it to look as realistic as possible and I think I accomplished this very well. Another thing I received good feedback on was my visualization of space, more specifically my posters on the wall and how I made them retreat back into the room. You can see that the top and bottom line of the poster don’t match up, not making a perfect rectangle. If it was a perfect rectangle, it wouldn’t be properly retreating into the depth of the room and would’ve overall ruined the perfect perspective. Doing this really showed the true angle of the wall and proved the viewers perspective as where it is.

 

 

Iterations

 

Grid Making

My first attempt at making a grid didn’t go very smoothly because I messed up my horizon line, shifting the perspective every so slightly so that the walls didn’t match up with the ceiling in the end and I had to start over again. Taylor gave me some helpful feedback when he took me aside to teach me step by step how to make a perfect grid. He recommended placing two central vanishing points on the horizon line instead of one, making the room even more precise by ensuring the floor tiles were all straight and even. Doing this made my floor perfectly aligned and straight, therefore perfecting my walls and ceiling as well.

This was my second grid attempt, the one Taylor helped me make and it turned out beautifully. I chose not to use it because I hadn’t hit the 200 sq ft maximum dimensions and I knew I could add more space to my room.

This was my third and final attempt at making a grid. It turned out perfectly, after two test runs, I knew what I wanted and I constructed it. I made my room 15×11 and lowered my horizon line to include a ceiling because I really felt inspired to add a chandelier. I also chose to use a smaller size paper compared to my second attempt which was very large, it barely fit in the locker and I didn’t want to carry a large piece of paper like that, unprotected, back and forth from my dorm to the studio. Because I downsized, I also forfeited the opportunity to have wide vanishing points. I wanted wider vanishing points so my room could appear to have more depth. Thomas helped me out here, suggesting that I could tape paper to the sides to extend my horizon line, making it possible for the far vanishing points. He suggested this kind of as a last resort, not expecting me to take his advice and he was pleased to see that I took his advice and that it turned out nicely. Taylor and Thomas’s advice really helped me out in this part of the project, because the beginning is always the most important part and I wanted my base/ beginning to be perfect, as the remainder of the project would follow.

 

Mood Board

Our first exercise at the beginning of this assignment was to create a mood board to set up a theme for our space and to visualize the different types of furniture that could be put into room as well as their dimensions. As I picked out pictures for my mood board, I relied a lot on Pinterest in the beginning to visualize a completed room and what aspects I thought looked best when paired with different kinds furniture. I got distracted by colors often because I love when different color palettes intersect perfectly and we all know that Pinterest is the god of color aesthetics. However, in this project, we didn’t get the privilege of adding colors, so the final will be strictly black and white. From Pinterest, I picked out multiple couches, a staircase referral, and some interesting chair designs that I was hesitant to try out. I also found a lot of small decorations that I wanted to add, like hanging plants and little trinkets to place on the desk or by the window just to fill up some space. I wanted my studio space to look real, like there was someone actively using it, instead of just an empty room. Out of all my ideas that I put into my mood board I only chose to bring a handful of them to life. I really liked how the palm tree leaves looked in the setting of my modern room but the sketching process was difficult due to all the detail in the shape of the leaves. The couch was also hard because it wasn’t a defined shape, it was combined of cushions, which is not one of my strong suits. The perspective was tricky to obtain, as it had to grow smaller as it receding to show the true length of the couch. I went through many erasers getting it perfect.

 

Drawing Process

When I first began adding all my items into the room, I ran into some problems pretty quickly. I underestimated how small the room actually was and it the beginning, I was really excited to try and construct a balcony on the back wall of the room. I wanted the balcony to be placed high to the ceiling so that the desk would fit underneath it but I saw that my ceiling wasn’t tall enough and if I was to go through with this idea, it would look crammed, awkward and disproportionate to a human body. I was so attracted to the idea of adding a balcony because I knew it was different and possibly risky, but it would make my work stand out. I also followed this idea with the chandelier. I knew some of my classmates chose not to add a ceiling view, so, if I added a ceiling with a chandelier, I could further my creative thinking and make my piece stand out from the crowd. I eventually ditched the balcony idea but kept the doorway that was supposed to lead up to it. I didn’t add many clues as to what the doorway led to, which I think adds mystery. Later, I soon fell in love with another idea, one I liked even better than the balcony loft: A window perch. This idea was tricky to construct because there weren’t many reference photos of an indoor window perch that fit my vision well enough. I also got a bit confused about the architectural elements of constructing an addition like this. It technically protrudes from the room, therefore making its own vanishing point, and I had to do some extra thinking in order for it to look acceptable. As you can see from the picture, I could never get the lines to look right, something always looked off. As for the rest of the room, minimal planning was required. The coffee table turned out to be glass because I thought I had too many solid colored things in the room already, I also chose not to round any corners because I had yet to draw corners in this room and I needed at least a little diversity, to step out of my comfort zone. Another minor setback was determining how to distinguish mirrors from glass. Taylor told me that to symbolism glass, I should add a couple diagonal lines, which I’ve done throughout my life and the effect is as expected, everyone recognized it as glass. But, I have only drawn a handful of mirrors in my life and usually I show they are mirrors by reflecting something else in the room. Due to the position of the mirrors on the left wall, there was nothing nearby or in that angle that the mirrors could logically project. So, I looked online and found that mirrors usually have multiple diagonal lines extruding from corners to show depth, if they are not already reflecting something. This marks the first time I have combined mirrors and windows in the same room.

Lastly, to add more life into my room, I added a lot of plants. I tried to disperse them around the room evenly instead of just one corner and I think the final product matched my intention nicely. The rug was a last minute addition to fill empty space and I think the design is unique and contrasting to the rest of the room.

 

Tracing process

The tracing process was difficult for me because I put off my work until that last day, which is not ideal, especially for me, but I struggle with motivation very often so if I’m pressured by a near deadline, it should be enough for me to get my work done quickly. I realize that speed is not the goal aspect of this project or any other project but sometimes, it works. I wanted to experiment with line weight more than I did, but I think I did an acceptable job of portraying distance and proximity using different thicknesses of my lines. I had some struggles with these pens because of how they smear. I haven’t drawn with ink in quite some time and I had completely forgotten how cautious you must be when moving your hand or sleeve. Due to this setback, there are places in my piece that look sloppy with drag lines and random smear marks and dots spread across the page. I would’ve enjoyed my piece to look clean and precise, alas, I have already finished and I can’t go back now. Another thing about switching from pencil to marker is line weight. With a light sketchy, flicking motion, you can create the thinnest of lines either used to for outlines or very small details. This was hard to recreate with Micron pens and I even worried about it before I started tracing. I do own the .005 Marker by Micron but it still was too small. My solution to this was to draw incredible lightly across the paper, feathering just the tip of the pen across the very top of the paper to get those super thin lines. You can see this in the hanging plant array in the back corner of the room. It can also be seen with the items sitting on the desk. Because everything was in the back of the room, the line weight had to be even more exaggerated to show distance from the viewpoint. There are many mistakes to my final composition but I still love how my final piece turned out and I think the black outline of everything makes it look more professional and real.

 

Digital Version

With mirror additions and extra designs.

Structure