Web Reflection

Web Semester 1 Final Reflection

So 1st semester has come and gone so we can look back on the war that is web design, and just like war web design never changes. Anyways im going to be reflecting on my progress throughout the semester through describing the work that went into creating my final project.

Overview

In this project we were given the task to create a website based off of what we were interested in.  My topic I decided on was Gaming Genre. Since I know a decent bit about the topic I loved to do my project over this. The overall purpose of this website was to fully test our overall knowledge that we had obtained throughout the semester. The process that went into making my site was simple. Just copy paste code from other sites I had made and edit them to match what I wanted.

What did I Learn?

Well over the project I really didnt learn anything. This project was more a test of skill then anything else. The one thing that I had learned from this project was that your website has to stay consistent. All color schemes have to match up to look appealing, all the text has to look good, the writing style has to stay the same. All to ensure that the viewer never gets confused or disinterested.

What would I do different?

I would like to have had a drop down menu bar for my side bar instead of the bar but time restraints forced me to stay with the simple option. The one thing I liked about my site was the color theme. The color theme, in my opinion, was by far the best part of the site with the site looking very clean with the banner. I think that the color scheme was the best aspect of my project and is probably the skill I will carry over to different projects.

First Semester  Reflection

This is my walk cycle project. It took a pretty long time and I was pretty harsh with myself in my blog over this project but looking back it really wasn't all that bad. I will say that it could have been improved if I had a proper model to animate with.  I wanted to reflect on this project because this project (besides my story) gave me the most trouble. Looking back on projects that gave you a tough time can really help you improve. To improve after  reflecting back on this project I noticed that the animation was really rigged with the character reacting to changes in movement with sharp movements making it look unnatural. Something that we didn't touch in the project but is still important to point out is that the rest of the body besides the legs and arms do not move.




Oh this project..... This project was a REAL pain. I mean almost EVERYTHING went wrong when creating this and on top of that we had a strict schedule we had to keep to. I chose this project to reflect upon for the reason I reflected on my last project,  the problems I encountered while creating the project. One of the problems I encountered was that my character WOULD NOT STAY TOGETHER. For the life of me I could not figure out why the puppet pin and parenting tools would not work. I ended up just animating each part individually. Something I learned from this project is that you will have to compromise. When doing something you will almost always encounter a problem and you have to figure out a way to work around it.



This was a fun one, my first 3d animation project. So far I am enjoying Maya much more compared to after effects just because of how easy it is to use. Another factor going into my enjoyment could be that I want to become a 3d character or environmental animator but still this program feels amazing to use. Anyways this project I was tasked with creating a castle by using booleans and textures. I thought this was a great intro project and it was a lot of fun for me to do. I picked this project to reflect on because I want to become a 3d animator and I think I can learn a lot from this project.  One of those things includes how to be effective in Maya. From what I have learned so far from Maya is that you have to take it slow. You can't just throw something together and hope it turns out well because something WILL go wrong and ruin your project. You also have to be able to see what will and will not work with some textures being just too bright or not being repeating.




This was my second animation project and you may notice that it looks MUCH more realistic compared to my last project. Well this is because of the use of lighting. Lighting in animation is absolutely essential if you want to create a world that feels alive. In this project we learned how to use the most basic lighting tools and shadow tools to cast onto our "poly thing". This "Polything" was created with the soul purpose being to demonstrate lighting. One thing that I learned from this project was that lighting is very realistic in these spaces. They act like they normally would if it was reality. If I were to use the spotlight tool it would look like a spot light is being used directly towards the object. This project in all is pretty simple to understand, we basically flashed lights at a weird ball and made it look cool. Even though its simple I can still learn the basics of lighting from this project.

Animated Story

The Story

A thief breaks into a museum to find a hidden treasure. He comes across the treasure and it is revealed that it is a cup. The cup is filled with a mysterious liquid so his first instinct is to drink it. This drink leads to the thief gaining immortality. The thief then drives away in his car with his immortality. 

The Process

This project was a burden on my soul. I had SO many things go wrong that I had to deal with. One of which is that my character would randomly just dismember in the video because their was a problem with the parenting tool. Another issue I had was that after effects is such a hard program to animate in. I personally have used other programs outside of school and they have been much easier to use (This may be because all of the programs I use animate on ones but still). Everything about the program seemed to be against me, layers wouldnt work, some would randomly disappear, keyframes not doing the things I told it to, and MANY more that I will not name. In total this project was more about problem solving, I actually had to draw a frame of the dude drinking at the end because of time constraints.

Multiplane Animation

Multiplane Animation Project

Multiplane animation is a more "recent" innovations in animation.  Originally utilized by Disney in the creation of "Bambi" and was created with a "Multiplane Camera"that would take pictures of frames but had perspective because of the distance between layers. This let animations seem as if they had depth and perception, making the animations seem more realistic and alive. With our most recent project we practiced this technique but instead of using a camera, we edited layers in PS and AE.

The Animation Process

The most challenging part of the project was to create the layers themselves. In my project I tried to add depth by using shading and such but that was a hit and miss. The next step in the process was to bring the layers into AE from PS and animate them. This was unbelievably easy. All we had to do was put the layers on the end of their layers and put a keyframe for them. BOOM, DONE.

The Final Product

The final product turned out well. I did a couple of things to make the shading better including burning the dark parts and highlighting the lighter parts. I also added bold outlines to the layers to make the layers pop out more and to make the layers blend better. I thought I did really well with this project, but still it was the easiest project we did all year so I guess thats a given.

Walk Cycle

The Walk Cycle Project

So yea.... this is my walk cycle project, interesting but more on that later. This project was very challenging do to a couple of my own set backs for myself that I didn't realize were going to be an issue until the animation process started and you can see what the problem was clearly in the video. 

The Process

First step in the project was to create a picture of the character you wanted to animate. We first drew a picture of the character and then uploaded it onto our computers. We then colored in the drawing as we pleased and separated layers to prepare for the animation. After this we brought the file into after effects to animate and thats where it all went down hill for me. I realized how awkward it was going to be to animate the character because I uploaded a character with depth already drawn into it. The goal was to have a side view of the character to easily animate the arms and legs, however I had a character with both a front view and side view making my job much harder. A suggestion to put a ball under Hobbes to mimic the concept of balance was given to me so I added it and it made it much better.

The Final Product

The final product or result of the project was not very good in my opinion. I would have liked to have had a cleaner walk cycle but  had to deal with the set backs that I set for myself so it is my fault alone and that is something I must improve for the next project. Another thing I would like to improve for my next project would be to have more clear lines then what I had on my character. Other then that I am pretty happy with the end product. 

Web Design Challenges.

Web Design Challenges

The challenges we have been assigned in web design have been interesting but most of all, tedious. The one thing that most of the students in our class are figuring out that coding is not challenging but more of a chore to complete. Especially when you have one flaw in your website and you are unable to locate the problem in your code. Ill talk about the 2 latest challenges I have been assigned in this blog.

Challenge No.4/Table Creation

All of our code is created within HTML code and theres a lot of thing you can do with it. One of which is creating tables. We were tasked in this challenge to create a table that contains 10 different HTML acronyms. This was pretty easy and simplistic with the most challenging task being the graph. There was a couple of errors I had including not closing the table and incorrectly listing some objects but thats about it for this one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Challenge No.5/RGB Color 

This one was a real doozy. Quite frankly the most challenging thing about this assignment was managing my sanity. With this website we were tasked with creating a site that described RGB Color Codes. RGB color codes are assignments of numbers and letters given to a color to represent it in code form. This sounds a bit complicated but it really isn't. Its just. Very. Tedious. I finally finished after about a week of on and off working but I thought that the lessons over the RGB color coding were very interesting and I am interested in what else we will learn within web design.

The Very Angry Worm

Animating a Very Angry Worm

This project went much faster compared to the bouncing ball surprisingly. The project went much smoother because of our familiarity with PS and AE; however, we used a different animating technique for the worm. With the bouncing ball we created ball keyframe at the top and bottom at each arch then filled in the space in each arch with extra frames and key frames. We took a different approach when animating the worm.

The Puppet Tool

The puppet tool is much more convenient in terms of effectiveness and ease of use. What the tool does is it creates pins on the layer you want. In each frame you can move them around and simulate motion AKA create an animation. The reason this is so helpful is that you can literally create one group of key frames and copy paste that across the time line and have a very smooth animation. The tool that ties this all together is the "Null Object" (Really weird name and kinda out of context if you ask me but I can let it slide.). This tool is used to make the worm go on a set path. If you were to JUST copy paste the frames then the worm wouldn't go anywhere.

Overall Experience

This project made me realize something about animation. Its a lot more simple and easy then I once thought. I believed that in each animation every person who animated it was an amazing artist that is capable of doing anything with characters, this is still true but not to the degree I thought. My experiences with this project were pretty mixed since I had some trouble with creating the initial cycle but the rest was fine.

 

Bouncing Ball Animation

The Bouncing Ball Animation.

So with school back in session its time to start animation once again. This years first project is almost identical to last years but a little more advanced. The task we were given was to make a bouncing ball using both Photoshop and Adobe After Effects. This was much easier then I had anticipated but still was a challenge. Here is the final product!

What Did We Learn?

This project was not as challenging as it was informative and it was the project that set an example as to how others will go. The process of the animation was different from last years since it included both PS (Photoshop)and AE (Adobe After Effects.). Both of these programs work in tandem with one another since you can create the assets in detail in PS and easily animate in AE. In terms of animation we learned/reviewed squash and stretch mostly, a technique that makes motion seem more realistic. I think I succeeded in executing this technique correctly in the animation.

Why is This Project Important?

This project will be important for my progression in this class on mostly a technical stand point. I was able to practice and use some of my animation skills/knowledge and get additional practice using other adobe programs. I think that this year will really cement what I will be pursuing in my future animation career throughout highschool and beyond and this has helped me further understand the basics of animation.

The Way Back Machine

A Time Machine! (But for the Internet.)

The way back machine is a website that, well, goes back in time. The website lets you search a website and it will display the history of that website that has been recorded. For instance, I could search "http://www.amazon.com" and the history of that website will be shown. You just need to click one of the links for the website and you will be shown a past screenshot of that site at the time. This sounds like it wouldn't be all that cool on the surface; however it is much more interesting considering on certain sites you can go back up to 20 years or more.

What Did You Find?

I have looked up a couple of sites in and out of school and its honestly fascinating. I think that youtube was the most interesting to see. If you go back to the first screen shot ever you can see that videos will load but have no pictures or tags with them. All the UI of the website looks very messy and confusing. We also looked at amazon and that was also pretty intriguing. All the items had no pictures but had names and description but I saw no price on anything.

WayBack Machine or WayBAD Machine?

The WayBack Machine is most defiantly an interesting site but at the same time it is a frustrating one. Some of the links to websites don't work and the website can be difficult to maneuver but overall I enjoyed the experience but to a certain extent. 

2nd Semester Final Blog

A Fitting  End to a Wonderful School Year.

School has always been about getting up really early, working on homework, doing some projects here and there, and stressing about tests; however e9 has changed that perspective for me. This class was not about what grade your getting or turning in homework or acing a test. This was a class about new experiences and learning what I want to learn. I have never been glad to have a project in a class before this year and that really is why I think this course is the right one for me. I constantly am wanting to push myself and say "Just a little longer" or "Don't stop keep going.". The feeling of working hard on something and doing your best to improve and then seeing that you have improved is one of my favorite feelings, and this is where e-Comm delivers.

My Groups 4th Quarter Project.

The project that everyone enrolled in e9 was assigned was to come up with a product, develop a logo and graphics for that product, create an ad to demonstrate and show off your product, a 3d and 2d animation and a website that would guide your presentation by organizing all of your thoughts into one place. This was a enormous mountain that we would have to climb since it was the most daunting and large scale project any of us had ever done for school.  In the sections below I will describe in detail how each part of our product was made.

Graphics and Logo Design.

Our concept for the product was a pen that would replace all of your markers and pens because it adapts to any color around you using color scanning technology.  After that step we wanted to through our logo design that it was interesting, neat, and colorful. We decided to tackle the typography first. In the "WonderPen" Logo you can see the pen under the W. We mainly used this for animation purposes but it also fit well as a graphic. The "Pen" in the words "Wonder" and "Pen" has been integrated into the end of "Wonder" making it look intriguing and it makes a first eye look twice to see what is really going on in the graphic. The process we went through to get these designs was incredibly tedious since we had to think of a way to make the words "Wonder Pen" look interesting. This was made even more difficult since none of us had really done anything in terms of typography. However that just made the learning experience even greater since we would take more interest in it because of our lack of knowledge about it. For example you always want all of your lower case letters in typography to hit the same top and bottom point to make the design look as even as possible. Some of the feed back about our logo was that, at first, the logo just looked flat out confusing. It was to the point that our classmates had to ask what some things were and after we explained it they still didn't understand completely. This made us need to completely rethink the logo to make it simpler and easier for someone to look at and immediately identify what it meant. I believe that our graphic designs and logos are pretty strong but we could have been much better. One thing that I would like to fix is the lower case letters in the "WonderPen" logo to make them all even.

Animations.

Our animations, in my opinion, were probably our strongest aspect. The animations we created were very good, not alone, but in the context they were used in. The 2d animation is the pen going into the W and filling the words "Wonder Pen" with color. This showed the viewers of the project that our product was about color and pens. The 3d animation was also very strong since it demonstrated the environment the pen would be used in and how it looked. I am personally going to study animation in my e-Comm course next year so this was a very important part of the project for me. This natural interest made me want to see how I could make the 3d animation look better since I was one of the two people working on it. I learned that creating 3d models is about getting down to the nitty gritty details and making everything in the model of the 3d animation look like it fits. I was the person who developed the pen in the 3d animation and I think it could have been much better. My main problem with my portion was that I had to create the pen from scratch meaning I had no references to go back to. This made me have to experiment and it overall could have looked much better if I had an idea of what to do going into it. I didn't receive any feedback on the animations surprisingly but it was mostly because we were short of time.

Commercial.

The commercial was very good and fun to work on. I was one of the main people who wrote the story board and script for the commercial and I really was focused on what we wanted the "Wonder Pen" to do as a product, make your art better and more efficient. In the commercial Paige is struggling with her art and suddenly the "Wonder Pen" is introduced and makes the art much better. Its simple and effective. The only real problem I had with the commercial is the setting. The setting of the commercial was very cramped and didn't allow us to work to our full potential. After we created the story board and prepared everything the only real change to the commercial was the editing and that was a couple of video filter changes and music being added. Again we were unable to get feedback since we did not have enough time.

WebSite.

Ok. This was my time to shine. My group members in the past had asked me for help in some of the other web design projects so they basically automatically assigned me to do the website. I was really wanting to show how good I was and test myself in my ability to code and design a website. There was a guide. I didn't use it. I didn't use the guide since I was already confidant in my skills that I just saw what I needed to put on the website and then I was off doing it myself. One problem I had while doing the website was that I really did not enjoy our color scheme that my team had decided upon and how it looked with the website. I wanted to change it so bad because I thought it looked unnaturally but my team insisted that we keep the color scheme since everything else was in that theme. Some of the feed back that I had received was mostly me missing a couple of things and I did add them but besides that the only real challenge I faced with this part was the pictures. The pictures made me want to rip my hair out. The problem with the pictures is that They would NOT want to move no matter what I did. I tried moving them in live and design view, nothing, I tried cutting and pasting the code in a different location, didn't do what I wanted them to do. I eventually just googled how to move them and that was that. 

Strengths and Weaknesses as an e-Comm Student.

A lot of e-Comm is based off of working as a team to find out everyones strengths and weaknesses and using each group member to their fullest potential so in e9 I discovered a couple of strengths and weaknesses I had.

Strengths

A couple of my strengths while working with my group were, making sure everyone is on the same page, trying to get a clear group view, and overall making the group work as fluid as possible. I feel that these skills I demonstrated during e9 make me a valuable team member that is concerned mostly about the team as a whole. Whenever we would make a decision I would always make sure everyone in the group was ok with it and if not I would want to here their suggestion because it could possibly be better then our original idea.

Weaknesses

A couple of my weaknesses while working with my group include, getting ahead, not being focused, and needing to be more fluid. Im the kind of guy who always wants a plan. I always want a plan if I'm doing anything. This could be anything from chores to projects, and if anything diverges with that plan I get kind of upset. This is something I have been working on for a while now and I am trying to improve.

In Summary.

This year was a blast. This program has been interesting since the day I set foot in the school and I don't see any end of my interest in sight. This program really focuses on enabling a student to have freedom in the program and lets them do just about anything. My favorite part of this semester would probably be my friends that I have made. This class has really helped me open up to new people and I some of the friendships that I have made are going to be long lasting. If I would change something about the second semester it would probably have to be to give more time for the 4th quarter project to allow the students to really flourish in what they are interested in. 

Final Thoughts.

e-Comm. is not a class about sitting through lecture that you only care about for your grade. Its about taking interest in something you love and pursuing it. Its about letting the student discover what they can do not a class about what they can't do. e-Comm is about us and not the grade (Im not saying you can fail and you will be fine), and that's why I like it so much. 

4th Quarter Graphic Design

Graphic Design for the Wonder Pen

These graphics that we have created are for our 4th quarter "Shark Tank" Project where we must create a product and with that develop graphics, animations, ads, and a website for it. To do this we must rotate groups so each group can get an equal share of time to work on each individual aspect of the project. Our class, however, had a slight advantage. We were able to think in depth about what we wanted our product to be before we started developing everything for it. This was an advantage that was specific to our class but that always comes with a higher bar that you need to reach. The images are the final product of our graphic design course in the 4th quarter period. 

Company logo

Lets start with the basics. This is our logo for our team and our team is called CAPS Co.. We went with this logo because we were thinking of developing an art related product so we were thinking of something related to art. We were getting bored thinking of the logo and eventually someone in the group started drawing on the paper a little tornado. We all eventually started doing it and then we had the idea of this being our logo since it is an art related icon that anyone can draw.

 The Product Logo

Ok next in the natural stage of progression we have the Product logo. This is actual an animation of that logo so I decided to go with the animation to add a bit of flare to it. Getting back on topic we were talking about how much we hated markers and how they are so annoying to carry around. We then started talking about a pen that had all the colors in it so you only had to carry one pen around and that is when the "WonderPen" was born. With the logo we really wanted to do something fun with it. Me and another  group member were looking at the words "Wonder" and "Pen". I then took notice that the "der" in "Wonder" looked very similar to "Pen" so we merged the two but we had to find a way to distinguish the "Pen" from "Wonder" and thats when my partner came up with making the N split so it looked like an N and an R.

Web Banner

This is our web banner. We just added our product logo, company logo, and product slogan. Its quite simple but it works effectively.

Coupon and Ad.

With the coupon and ad we went with a more eye catching design to really draw the consumer in. With the color scheme we went with a dark red and a bright green. This was to add visual interest in the ad and make it stand out.

CSS and CARP Design

CSS and CARP Project

For our final project in graphic design we created a website to demonstrate our knowledge with HTML files and CARP design. In the project we learned how to manipulate CSS and HTML files to create a website with a better design to it. Last time we created a website it was the bare minimum of what we could do with a website but with the CSS files there is a lot more you can do.

With CSS                                                          Without CSS

C

C in CARP stands for Contrast. Contrast in a work is the difference between 2 or more things in the piece. An Example of this is the dog compared to the text in the CSS. Your eye is immediately drawn towards the dog in the picture. However in the HTML without the CSS has the dog in an odd place and just looks out of place.

A

A in CARP stands for Alignment. In most works Alignment is used to make the piece look neat and organized. This can be shown in the CSS file where all of the text looks in place and organized compared to the one without the CSS file. 

R

R means Repetition in CARP. Repetition is mostly used to have a modern more futuristic design but can be used in other ways as well. In the CSS piece its repetitious in the test format. The stanzas have a distinct way that they are formed compared to the one that lacks the CSS file.

P

Last but certainly not least comes Proximity. Proximity is a weird one. It can make a work dynamic or interesting but if used in correctly it can just make it confusing. In this project the form of proximity wasn't so obvious. The grouping of the stanzas could be considered proximity because of how close they are to each other.

What did I Learn about CSS?

When creating this project I actually wanted to stay away from the videos while creating the website. Being able to learn through discovery rather then a guide is better in my opinion. It allowed me to learn a lot more then I would if I had stuck to the videos. For example by my logic I thought of the HTML file as the frame work of the website. It maybe boring and bland but its absolutely essential in the creation of the website. Then the CSS files is what all you can do with the website. It makes the website have a lot more personality. Overall this project was a good learning oppurtunity and gave me insight as to what web design is going to be like. 

Color Theory

What Is Color Theory? (Without The U in Color)

Color theory is a very interesting topic to me. I find it interesting that certain people will react to certain colors differently for different reasons. The basis of color theory is centered around this very idea and can be a game changer when it comes to both graphic design and logo design. An example of color theory being put into practice would be the "Red Bull" Logo. The "Red Bull" logo is possibly one of the best examples to explain color theory. You will notice that in the "Red Bull" logo there are only 2 colors, red and dark yellow. This is because the logo designers wanted the logo to be in your face and feel alive while also keeping a simplistic design.

My Favorite Color

A creators personal preference can impact a design immensely making it there own piece of work and making it appeal to a certain group. The most noticeable is the color choice in a work. In most works of a personal piece the artist will add in a bit of there favorite color to everything. In my example my favorite color is white (Yes it is a color, and yes I know it's a stupid favorite color). The reason I like white so much is because it reminds me of playing in the snow with my brother and its also just relaxing to look at. So my pieces of work will have a lot of white added in and make the design more relaxing to look at.

My Least Favorite Color

I hate dark green. I hate it so much. In my opinion the most ugly color is a dark green. It is unpleasant to look at and just looks nasty. It also makes me remember when I was a little kid I was very prone to get sick so that makes my perspective on the color change drastically. This, obviously, will lead me to stay away from using the color in anything I create because of my natural bias towards it.

So Why do Colors Matter in Graphic design?

Colors convey a message. They tell the consumer what the product is and what target audience it will be aimed at. Going back to the "Red Bull" example, the logo is supposed to be in your face and exciting. This of course will make it relate to sports, parties, competition, anything intense essentially.  The reason color combinations matter so much is because it can make you uncomfortable while looking at it. Everyone knows that green and yellow rarely match right? Well the same could be said for green and red, or yellow and violet. This is because of the color wheel that describes all of the related colors and how to use them.  Notice how orange and red are close to each other, thats why the "Red Bull" Logo is so interesting. It includes all of the aspects of color theory into its design.   

20 Birds and Illustrator recreation

Creating my 20 Bird Sketch

So for this project we had to create 20 variations of either a bird, house, or flower. I, of course, chose the bird for my project. Most people might think that creating 20 completely different birds would be easy but to that I say NO! NO IT ISN'T! I found this part of the project to be extremely challenging for a lot of reasons. You can see that I have variations of realistic birds like my wood pecker and parrot and I have cartoony fun birds like my bald eagle and "Robin Hoot". This was challenging for me because of how many things we had to do. The first 10 are pretty easy but then you realize that "Crap, I need ten more! what am I gonna do!" so you start to lean more towards realistic birds and start to replicate that. It was a lot of fun, however, being able to challenge myself with something new.

Illustrator Recreation

In illustrator we had to recreate one of the sketches we created so I went with my wood pecker. I don't think it was my best sketch on the page (Either the parrot or the bald eagle is my favorite) but I chose it because I thought it would be a good challenge to test my knowledge of illustrator. It went as I wanted seeing as a learned some very neat tricks within illustrator such as the ability to bring a part of the image forward in front of another one and just over all tricks with the pencil tool to help me out. The wood pecker was a challenge at times, however, with multiple things on the bird having to be pixel perfect. It was a overall good learning experience for me and I really do think I benefitted from it.

Final Product

The piece of work came out great in my opinion with only a couple bad spots on it. It has good pencil and border management and its very clean. If I were to change one thing about my work it would most likely be the tail section at the bottom. It's pretty sloppy and doesn't fit with the rest of the piece. I would give it a 7/10 but I don't think the work is whats important in this lesson. I feel as if the work was a medium for me to learn rather then to test my skill. If I were to completely redo the entire illustrator image it would look much better then it is right now. This is because for one I would be able to look at the flaws of my piece but most importantly I would have the set of skills I gained when doing the project. Its not really about how good it looks right now in my opinion, its about what you learn is what is important right now. 

My Meyers Brigs Test

Who am I?

The "Myers Brigs" Test is a test that will tell you a very basic understanding of your personality through a series of questions. Some of these questions can very from "Go out with friends or stay inside and relax?" to "When doing something do you try new things?". After taking this test it will give you a 4 letter result that tells you who you are. After taking my test I had gotten ENTJ meaning, E for Extravert, N for iNtuitive, T for Thinking, and lastly J for Judging. 

This rating is a common theme among leaders and very influential people such as Bill Gates and Stalin. This is because the rating is commonly associated with leadership and people that can get work done.


This is a very accurate description as to who I am. I am a very directive person that likes to take control of situations and use myself to the fullest of my extent in those situations. The attribute shoes that is the most accurate is intuitive in my eyes. I am always looking for better ways to accomplish one goal and how to be more effective. Judging is not so much what I thought it would be since I'm on the border line. I tend to assess a person quickly to see what they are feeling or what type of mood they are in, this is referred to as "Emotional awareness". This skill lets me have a better sense of how I need to handle certain people when talking to them in a certain situation so I believe Judging is one of my strongest assets.

My personality type just screams leader, I mean, I have several presidents that had the same type as me. Let me present a situation, a group of hikers gets lost in a mountain range and I am apart of that group, what would I do? Well I believe I would assume the role as leader within the group. I wouldnt flat out say  "You all have to listen to me right now!", I would instead

Over the course of my life I have grown from a very spastic and energetic character to a very passive and outgoing one, however my meyers brigs is not telling anything false. If I do get into a situation were I WANT to be engaged, I'm gonna be all in. Wether it be sports, video games, scouts, you name it I just want to be engaged and have fun challenging myself. My meyers brigs test made me realize that even though I might change as a person my personality will stay mostly intact and thats a good thing in my opinion.

Into Illustrator! But first lets sketch our plan out.

Before diving into Adobe illustrator we made a sketch of something surrounding shapes. I decided to draw "Rowlet" because of his simple design and he was very easy to draw because of his circular body and circular body features. I have been practicing drawing out side of school and I really feel as if I'm making progress. I really like the style of pencil only on paper but it just feel unnatural on computer. I cannot show this sketch unfortunately since it is web-locked and I can't add it to this blog.
One of the sketches key features is that it focuses on how round and bold some of the borders are to emphasis the shape aspect.

Recreating my sketch in illustrator.

When I recreated my sketch in illustrator I found that color would be more appropriate then just black and white because on the computer I lack the control I have while drawing on paper for he time being. Illustrator also has a few hidden tricks that people such as myself can really use to the fullest. See illustrator is a bit like learning how to play a competitive video game such as "Smash Bros. Melee". On the surface the program might seem simple at first and people will get the hang of the most basic features first like the pencil tool or selector, then people will start to discover some hidden tricks within the program to find a easier or faster way to accomplish the same task but even better. For me this was the shapper tool and the smoothness of the pencil tool. The pencil tool seems like a very simple one on the surface but it can adapt to virtually anything you need to be done. Say you want a smaller print, you can do that, you want your lines smoother, you can do that, you want to have the most precise tracking of where your pen tool goes to really have an exact experience, you can do that. I mainly used this to tackle small features such as his wings or his feet.

The Shaper Tool

One of the main focuses of this project was to become familiar with the shaper tool. The shaper tool is like the pencil and shape tool all in one convenient bundle. Basically the shaper tool is just a variant of the pencil tool that if you draw a circle the drawing will automatically make a circle that symmetrical and everything. The thing that separates this from the shaper tool from the shape tool is that the shaper tool is much more versatile. You can do anything with the shape you just created like make it bigger or smaller, attach another shape to it and connect it with no lines in the middle, or just cut out parts of the circle. Referring back to my competitive gaming example, you might have a very basic grasp of the game (The normal shape tool), but once you do a little bit of research and practice you are able to play the game in a much deeper way (The Shaper tool). 

A Taste of Graphic Design

My First Experience With Graphic Design 

Im back from winter break and enjoy the holidays but its time to get beck to e-Comm! When we came back from break we transitioned classes once more for the final rotation and in this branch I will be studying graphic design. We have just finished our first project in graphic design and it has really given me inside as to what graphic design is.

Creating my Vision of Graphic Design 

Graphic design means many things in all forms of media, it could range from a logo seen on a shirt to a logo how you organize your thoughts in an ad; However one thing in graphic design holds true for all forms of media it is used for, the job of a designer is to create something that will draw someones eye and make the person obtain interest in what you are advertising. For our first project we had to create a sketch of what graphic design means to us. This could be anything in media today such as a logo or character. With my sketch I focused more towards highlighting logos because I believe that logos are the biggest example of graphic design in life today and I had to feature my favorite games and social media outlets of course. The logos I chose were for a purpose however and hold a lot of meaning. The rust Logo is my favorite in the sketch. It's simple yet invokes a lot of thought making you wonder "Whats with the radiation symbol next to "RUST"?" or "Why is it called rust in the first place?". Another one of my favorite logos I had drawn is the instagram logo. The logo highlights one of the best features of instagram, the community is carried and you will find lots of different people and channels. This might not be so obvious but the rainbow represents the variety within the app. Another thing in my sketch is the color, I added color because I really wanted to highlight everything about my logos and designs that I thought represented graphic design.

The 7 Key Elements of Graphic Design 

In graphic design there are many tools and techniques used by the designers to grab the students eye. For this project we learned and used the 7 most essential elements every designer uses in every piece. The first is Line, lines are used to emphasize certain parts of the piece and make a certain part really pop out. The next is color and this is one of the most important. Color generates a certain emotion in people like red being fierce or love and blue being calming. Texture is also an element designers use to create variety within the design that they are creating. The 4th technique used is size, size is used to convey importance or stress a great example of this is the header and titles of this blog! Shape is next and is used to create visually appealing pieces and have eye catching features. Space within graphic design makes anything easier to look at, say for instance this blog. If the space was no in between the headings and paragraphs it would just look like a mess! The last element that graphic designers put to use is value and this is how bold or colorful one part is.

 The Sketching Process 

The sketching process is a very relaxing part of graphic design and it needs to be that way. When I was sketching my piece I wanted to be relaxed so I could be able to think clearly without worrying about something else so that my design could be more appealing. Another aspect of the designing process that I really enjoyed is personal impact on your own piece and how others may have drawn it. This piece was a personal one for everyone because your not strictly making one thing like the other classes. With this project we were able to truly express what we were wanting to convey through graphic design and that was what the lesson was about. The lesson was not about the techniques used but how to use them to convey our own message in your own way.