Hey, Go Make Me Something! (Toy Plane Edition)

Our assignment this week in Visual Design was to take this picture of a toy plane:

and make something new and creative. The plane made me think of the WWI era, so I decided to make a WWI US propaganda poster:

I had a lot of fun with this project. I learned more about the trace tool in illustrator (I messed around with the tools, but it started with the 6-color preset). I also used my knowledge of the pen tool, blending modes, and effects to create this poster. Overall I'm proud of how it turned out.

Giant Ego

This week in Visual Design our assignment was to follow along with a video tutorial in creating an Alice in Wonderland-esque scene. The girl was originally photographed in a box, and our goal was to place her in a room to make it appear as though she is a giant. We learned compositing skills like matching the hue, saturation, and lighting; using the clone stamp to fill in areas; and using the pen tool. My favorite thing that we learned was how to create a brush for drawing in the hair. I feel like I did a good job in the time frame we were given, and I'm proud of the result, shown below:

Princess Yourself

Our assignment this week was to create a prince/princess version of yourself or someone in the class. We could do an illustration or photoshop. I chose to create an illustration of myself in a princess dress. The result is shown below:

I'm very proud of how this turned out. I tried out a new lighting style and I believe it adds to the cartoony style of the illustration. This was a fun project to try out new styles.

From Crappy to Snappy

This week in Visual Design, our assignment was to take a mediocre design and create a new one. I chose to redesign the logo for Brevard Archers, a local archery group whose competitions I frequent. Their current logo is shown below:

It's not terrible, but there are a few problems that I have with it. For one, the eye on the deer looks unnaturally large and cartoony, in contrast too its overly intricate antlers. The target is obscured by these antlers, and it personally took me a while to recognize that the circle and the u-shape were meant to resemble a target. I hoped to fix these issues with a new design:

The new design still has the deer, however it has simplified and the eye removed. I decided to get rid of the target all together and instead have crossing arrows to represent archery. Instead of using the full group name, I went with the initials to emphasize the simplicity of the new logo.

Welcome to London

This month in Visual Design our assignment was to create a simple, 3D map in illustrator of a city of our choice. I chose the City of Westminster in London, as I may be visiting it soon. During the assignment, I learned quick shortcuts to skew items, as well as how to create three dimensional objects. I had to get creative with some of the buildings (namely Big Ben, the London Eye, and Westminster Abbey), as they lacked traditional rooftops. This assignment taught me how to improvise when you are faced with an uncommon problem. The finished result is shown below:

Holiday Project

For the holiday season, our Visual Design instructor had us create a self-directed project. Because of my love for Disney, I decided to create a short animation starring Oswald and Mickey, where they would have a snow ball fight. I had used the Animation window in CS2 before, but this is my first experience with the Timeline feature in CS6. They are very similar, but the Timeline feature has a few more options. It wasn't difficult to switch between the two. Below is the frame-by-frame animation that I created as a gif.

Portfolio Update

In honor of completing the fist half of my Junior year, I've updated my portfolio to include even more pictures. I created a logo to don the front of my portfolio from earlier in the year (And, if you haven't noticed, has the honor of being my favicon for this blog). The colors remain mostly the same, but fonts have changed and text has been added. Below I have included a few pictures from my portfolio: the cover, the about page, and an example page.