Pop Art Project

In this project, we had to choose a 'subject', a cylindrical object that we could work with and we had to replicate it's image in different mediums such as drawing, shading, color pencil, and screen printing. This was rather fun thinking back on it. The drawing was really hard at first but after actually doing it, it was easier. It was especially hard to draw the font and the top of the Coca-Cola can. After that, for the rest of the mediums, we just used a light source below our paper to use the original drawing to draw on another paper so that we could shade/color/stencil using the lines. The shading was rather difficult at first because due to the white of the font; the lighting was really hard to get and I was rather wary of making it too dark and then not being able to display the lighting effects and highlights. But if I thought the shading was hard, the color pencil was harder though it was more fun. I tried using darker tones like brown to make other colors darker kind of like how it was shown in the video but I accidentally sketched over the white letters. However it was fixed with a good eraser and the little that was left behind simply emphasized the shadows which was good. On the other hand; the orange and the red tones were overlapping each other so at one point the part between letters were more orange than red though I managed to fix it with some extra red though it did still look more orange. But anyways I had fun with the parts that were somewhat separate from the text because the coloring around text was the hardest part. It wasn't so easy to fix mistakes there as it was in an empty section. Nonetheless the most difficult part of this entire project for me was the screen printing. I wasn't really strong enough to screen print effectively and I think my registration of the paper and design wasn't really aligned perfectly so it kind of came out wacky and had quite a few white spaces between the different stencils... Also I don't think I chose the colors that well; It would have been better with the normal colors of the Coca-Cola can like red and white and black.

Hybrid Animals

This assignment was to create two hybrid animal by using two or more animal pictures, each, from google images. We also had to cite sources and create their habitat as a background behind them. I have to say when I first started this project; the first thing that popped into my mind was the monsters and mythical creatures from well myths and fiction stories that contained myth (ex: Percy Jackson, Kane Chronicles, How to Train Your Dragon [Vikings -> drove me to look up Norse Mythology], etc). When I brainstormed, I realized how many monsters I knew. There was a lot and there were even more that I didn't mention because they were just huge versions of real animals like the Acromantula and Basilisk from Harry Potter were just giant spiders and snakes and then there were cyclops who weren't really animals but rather human (close enough) giants who were strong and had one eye. What really drew my eye was the Cerberus drawings and pictures that I had found online. Usually myths and fiction books just mention him being a giant dog with three heads but in these drawings there were different animal heads and he had snake tails and there were a variety of deadly animals mixed in him. Also going on this I found the Chimera, a fire-breathing Greek Monster who has many animals mixed in it but is often depicted with a lion with a head of a goat rising from it's back and has a snake for a tail. I found this very interesting and deadly so I decided to do something very similar to these two mythical creatures.

I used a white tiger's body, a white lion's head and a snake tail with the background being a volcano close up picture. At first I tried the three heads of Cerberus or even just two heads but I had too much trouble with the neck so I kept it simple with just one head. And I had also tried a white wolf head but the tones weren't matching and it was much more of a hustle and the head also looked to small. So I went with a simplistic design and whenever I think of Cerberus, I usually think of him lying on his paws just watching. So I chose to portray this lion-snake-tiger hybrid in that pose. Also I used a one-horned animal to better display the majestic disposition of the lion. I named it Nemean Chimera in respect to the Nemean Lion and the Chimera in Greek Mythology. For the texting, I used the wind filter and I colored the font gray so it sort of looks like ashes but is more clear.

My second hybrid animal is a horse with swan's wings, goat (kid) legs, cat paws and black antlers of a stag (I presume). I got inspiration from BlackJack, a pegasus from Percy Jackson and I noticed that the cat paws didn't really go along with the legs so I decided to find an animal that had similar legs but slightly more furry; eventually I found a goat and later I had to crop and rotate the legs to fit the legs of the horse and it was easy enough to add the antlers and the cat paws. I also had a lot of fun doing the fonting for the name (Pegan's Kitty Bambi); I used a lot of filters and light and shadows to make the font more water-y and add the sunlight form the side. I also used perspective to make it seem like it was leaning towards the pegasus though I had to move the Pegan's Kitty Bambi backwards into the scene so that the water (the most appropriate location for the text) would be free.

CD Cover

In this project, we had to make a CD Cover using a photo editing application such as Photoshop or GIMP. As always, I used GIMP. Anyways in this assignment, we were provided with prompts that we would randomly choose using the internet. We had to go to a random page on Wikipedia and the title of the first article we found was the name of the band/music artist. Then we went to Quotations Page and in there we went to random quotes and the last four words of the last quote on the page was the title of the album we were making the Cover for. Finally we went to Google Images and searched the last four words of the quote and we had choose one out of the first four images we found (using the "labeled for reuse"); this would be our raw image for the cover.

My Prompts:

Title of Album:

                    "Quimby"

Quote:

"I've decided that the key to happiness is low expectations"

- Laura Moncur

Raw Image

At first I was confused as to what to do with this image but later I realized that people's high expectations of others sometimes (many times) burdens the person in question [I came to this conclusion with the help of a few movies and books]. Expectations often smother people and their own desires. So in this I realized, low expectations could mean freedom and lightness of mind and freedom is often represented by birds and that was how I was going to use this image. Of course the beach and the sunlight filtering through makes it look genuine and much better so I decided to keep the landscape but change it using some other pictures and a lot of opacity. Also I darkened the sky to a violet blue [yellowish from the sunlit area]

Other Pictures:

Image #1

Image #2

I used Image #2 first for the person standing up and reaching for the heavens and added in the rainbow. After that I found this really cool looking text effect but it was too hard to replicate so I only did part of the process and left it at that.

Final Product

I added in a duller look to make it seem darker because the quote/title does have some negative connotations. And I made it a woman because Elmira [Quimby] is a woman and fights for women's rights and also it was a woman who said the quote. I made the bird behind her look like her wings and I made it pink to allude to the idea that "all women like pink." I made the woman yellow to attract attention to her. Also I think this wasn't really good because the text effect kinda disappeared and it was a bit too dull and the "Quimby" and the women were the same color which kinda alludes to something different.

Copyright - Fair Use

Fair use is the legal way to use copyrighted work in order to help your own purpose. There are many types of ways that you can use copyrighted work, fairly. For example; parodies, scholarship & research, criticism and news-reporting and ART. But in the end, it all comes down to four basic factors; The Purpose & Character of Use, The Nature of the Copyrighted Work, The Amount & Substantiality and The Effect on the Market. The court takes these four factors into serious consideration so it's better if you keep in mind, the four factors, as you use copyrighted work instead of relying on types of ways that you can use copyrighted work.

This affects Graphic Design because it affects Art. For instance, if I see a delta symbol in one of my textbooks and decide to manipulate the design to use it as a part of a greater design and changed it's meaning by, maybe adding an alpha and omega; then I have changed it's purpose and thus it is fair use of copyrighted material. Also we don't want people to steal our art, our designs (graphic or not) and Copyright laws are supposed to prevent that from happening but we still get inspiration from other works of art and thus we need to know the boundary of the amount/substance we can use from the copyrighted work.

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Business Card

We had to make a business card that promotes us or a business that we have a hand in. In this business card, we had to make sure it was balanced, aligned and had a hierarchy. In GIMP, we had to draw the vertical and horizontal scale down 0.25 inches down two times. After we were done with that, we had to create a background layer where our background color would go and then we had to drag our logo onto GIMP which would cause it to become an entirely new layer. I ended up with a simple design; a polygon on the left side with the logo on top and a polygon containing my name with the information right below the polygon with my name, on top of only the background layer. I used a fancy font for my name and a yellow background at first and a text that was light but seemed to be used universally for digital purposes. My second card had logos next to the information signifying what the information meant (for example; twitter logo for my twitter id). And my third card was changed so the background was black and the information and logo were white. My final card was black with a teardrop hole between the polygons with a design in it and the polygon with the logo was separated to take up some more space and also had a design in it but it was rather busy.

Importance of Graphic Design

Graphic design is very important in our life. It attracts attention to the company and also serves as an ad. People would want to buy and use products from the company if the logo is really cool. Not only that, other ads also push people to buy these products. And people don't want to wear or use something plain with barely any design; they want personalized designs on most of their things so it's seen as really important. Graphic design is about interpreting a meaning from how it's designed; looking at the symbolism of the smaller, more popular designs. It should be simple enough that people don't think it's crammed and that it's too much work to interpret. It shouldn't have too much colors as well because that affects the simplistic design of the ________. Graphic design attracts attention to the company which affects business and economy which is a huge part of society as a whole.

Spirit Animal Stencil

In this project, we had to find animal representations of us. First, we had to choose one animal to represent us; I chose a falcon, and then we had to take a spirit animal quiz where we would get the choice of 3-4 animals in the end. The butterfly was most prominent in the quiz so I chose that animal to sketch two times; both of which had to be realistic. We also had to draw two symbolic versions of it but my butterfly ended up a bit too complicated. Finally I drew the symbolic version onto paper and thickened some lines and changed some details so it would look better. For homework, we researched the Color Theory to help us After that I taped the paper onto the cardboard and used a sharp edge to cut the details out so that only an outline remained. At the end, I had to experiment with four categories of analogous colors using the wet-on-wet technique and then we had to choose one of those four designs for our backgrounds. I chose the pink-purple-blue design for my background. Finally I chose dark blue and silver for the spray paint which imprinted the butterfly design onto the background. To finish it off, I plastered it onto the front of the artbook to act as a cover...

Final Product

Image sources:

http://www.reusableart.com/miwp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/falcon-01.jpg
http://png.bychuhe.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/butterfly-png-image-20.jpg
http://www.pengadprinting.com/drupal6/core/sites/default/files/Colorwheel.png