End of the Year Sophomore Reflection for Graphic Design

Over the semester in Graphic Design, we did many things to become stronger with not only our design skills, but our technology, collaboration, communication, project management, and leadership skills. Being in this class helped build those skills by having us do different activities such as, presenting our work to the class, giving criticism to our classmates, creating and updating a Bechance portfolio, having an organized server folder with all our work in it, and helping others to improve by giving constructive criticism. We also spent a lot of time, well, working with graphic design. Here I am going to reflect over the many projects we did this semester.

Nelson Art Museum Poster

Our first project was to create a poster for a fake event at the Nelson Art Museum. The event was supposed to be for a art showcase of a famous artist or movement. I chose constructivism as my movement. This took a while to do, as I had to do research over the constructivism movement before I could begin working in the style. Figuring out how to relate the Nelson Art Museum to constructivism was hard, but I managed. While creating this, I learned that a lot of current art movements are inspired by constructivism, and they utilize a lot of constructivism's main properties. I was told by my teacher and by my peers that it looked almost like a movie poster, and that the layout of the poster was really well done.  I'm really proud of how this project came out in the end. I feel like it follows the constructivism style well, and that it gives the information for the event in a clear and concise way.

Quote Typography

Our next project was centered around typography. We were to look up four quotes that we really enjoy or relate to, and then make a typography artboard for each quote. I had a lot of trouble finding quotes that I liked, so I chose two from a video game that I really like, and two silly ones from some YouTubers that I watch. Along the way I learned about how type should be arranged and that certain color schemes work better with certain pieces of art. Next time I do a project like this I might try to take it a little more seriously and choose some better quotes, but I don't have all day to look up a quote I like. I didn't really like this project. I'm not a huge fan of typography, since there are so many rules that have to be followed, and a lot of precise things like kerning and different fonts.

Company Rebrand Logo 

One of our more recent projects was to rebrand a local company's logo. First we had to come up with a bunch of symbols that we thought fit the company, and then we had to come up with some lettermarks that also fit the company. Once we found the symbols and letter marks that we liked, we had to combine them to make black and white logos. This was a long project that involved researching our company to get to know what they're about and then figuring out how we could a design a logo to fit the company's purpose. I had a hard time brainstorming the first symbols we made, as we had to make a total of 30 symbols. I thought this was a little ridiculous, and it quickly turned into busywork. After we had the six symbols we liked, we had to make 6 different versions of each symbol with different color schemes, resulting in a grand total of 36 different combination logos. Usually by this point we are supposed to narrow down our choices, but instead we just had too much on our hands. However, I feel like I learned to be more patient with this project. I was getting tired of doodling meaningless logos and switching around color schemes, but I managed to make my way through. I really didn't like doing this project, but I'm happy with my final results. I feel like my logos were thought out, original, and they fit the company brand.

Business Card, Letterhead, and Envelope

This project was our final project of the year. It involved taking our favorite combination logo from our previous project, and creating a business card, letterhead, and envelope for the company that we're working on. I enjoyed this project a lot more since we didn't have to create a billion different versions of the same thing. I feel like we had a lot more creative freedom with this project, too. I did have a little bit of a hard time figuring out the information that goes on the business card, however. I was told by my peers that the pattern on the back of the business card was cute, and that the borders on the letterhead helped guide the eyes towards the actual words that may be written on the paper. I'm pleased with both the process and the outcome of this project, as I had fun and I think my designs are well done.

Over the semester in Graphic Design, I had some productivity issues. I got all my stuff turned in, but I was easily distracted by my friends. Finishing early was hit or miss for me; I either worked on extra credit assignments or worked on my own graphic design stuff, or I talked with my friends. I did, however, work outside of class in Illustrator at home if I really wanted to do more work on a certain project.

I feel like I have a strong sense of design. I'm proud of most of my projects, and I try to help others who need help making a design look the way they want.

I just really need to improve attention span. I need to find some way to stop myself from getting distracted.

Overall, Graphic Design was probably my favorite class this year. I loved getting to create art digitally. I would probably change the amount of busy work we're given, though. My biggest take-away is that all art has value, whether you're a professional in the work-force or a sophomore in high school. For next year I'd like to become less distracted so I can get more work done. I'm really excited for next year, since I'll get to learn more about graphic design.

End of the Year Sophomore Reflection for Animation

Sophomore animation was, overall, very stressful. But I had a lot of fun in the class. My teacher was really great and the projects were interesting.

I learned a lot over the entire year. In e-Comm, we have five "guarantees":
Technology, Collaboration, Communication, Project Management, and Leadership.

• From technology, I effectively learned how to use Adobe After Effects and Maya to make 2D and 3D animations. We were taught these programs through various tutorials that taught us the basics of each program. This information is useful because I may need to make animations for various jobs. Learning After Effects was stressful, since there were so many different options for different things in After Effects.
• From Collaboration, I learned to better communicate with others to get group projects done through making a short animated movie with four other people. Learning to work with others is important because it happens a lot in many different careers, and if you can't work with others then you won't get very far in your career. I had a lot of issues working with others since I tend to be more shy towards those I don't know. e-Comm is helping me get over this though,
• I learned kind of the same stuff from Communication that I learned in Collaboration. I learned to better communicate with others over projects, even if they weren't collaborative. Even if you aren't working with others, it's good to get the insight of peers so you can have a better perspective of where you're going. It's hard to reach out to the people you don't know and ask for criticism, since you never know what they're going to say.
• Project Management taught me how to be better at keeping my files organized. Keeping a server folder and having to make sure all my files were in the right place, especially when working with After Effects helped me learn to be more organized. Being unorganized is one of the most stressful things that can happen to a person, so it's important to keep your things straight. I didn't really face many organization issues, since I'm already a rather well organized person.
• Leadership is probably the one I learned the least from. I'm a follower by nature, and it's difficult for me to take hold of a situation for others. I'm having a hard time thinking of any leadership skills that I learned. This is troubling to me since being a leader is a really good skill to have, even if it's hard to achieve.

I've also discovered some strengths and weaknesses while taking this class. I tend to get easily distracted by my friends or other schoolwork. However, I am also a fast learner, and even when I get behind I tend to catch up rather quickly. Since this class was very stressful, I've learned to manage stress more easily and take more breaks. I still need to work on not getting distracted, though.

With everything I learned this year, I'm probably going to try and apply animation to some of my works in Graphic Design next year. Having an animated graphic could add to the interest of it.

I would probably change the order we learn some of our major skills in. We learned special effects after we finished learning Maya, but since special effects is done in After Effects, it would make more sense to learn special effects while learning After Effects.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I feel like it taught me to be independent, but at the same time to rely on others for help and criticism when I need it.

Strawberry Hill Rebrand

Our 4th Quarter project for Graphic Design was to re-design a local company's logo. I chose Strawberry Hill Povitca as my company. I tried to make a somewhat refined logo with warm and "sweet" colors, since politic is a sweet treat

Our logo was chose from a series of 6 different combination marks, each with 6 different color schemes for a total of 36 logos that we created by hand. It was a hard choice, but I felt like this one fit the most.

I based the letterhead, business card, and envelope off of the color scheme from the logo, so that the logo wouldn't feel out of place.

The letterhead was made to look interesting on both the front and the back to keep the reader interested and make it feel like they're not just reading another letter in the mail.

The business card is meant to stand out so that the employee can get more clients.

The envelope is also meant to stand out from all the bills that a receiver may get in the mail. If the envelope looked like another bill, then the receiver may not want to open it.

My favorite part of this project was creating the business card. I've always thought business cards were really neat and professional looking, and to get to design one was a lot of fun

Overall this project was a lot of fun. I had a good time looking for a company to rebrand, and then finding the company I liked made me feel happy since I really like povitica and I've had Strawberry Hill's povitica before.

"Criticism Of The Facial Animation In 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' May Have Been Misdirected" Article Review

The article "Criticism Of The Facial Animation In 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' May Have Been Misdirected" by Kevin Murnane discusses how many people have negative opinions on Mass Effect: Andromeda's facial animations. The article first summarizes people's reactions, and then explains why the facial animations are so bad.

Murnane believes that criticisms towards the game should have been directed at Electronic Arts, the game's publishing company, rather than the animators who may have been rushed to get the game ready for release. The author states that "people at either Bioware or Electronic Arts, the game's publisher, that insisted the game be released before it was ready." (Kevin Murnane). Murnane talked with Jonathan Cooper, a lead animator on previous Mass Effect games. Cooper said that "In RPGs like Mass Effect, the player chooses among dialogue options which lead to different paths through a conversation. Rather than a single, scripted dialogue sequence there are any number of possible dialogue paths. Facial animations must be created for all of these paths" (Jonathan Cooper).

The article does a really nice job at defending the animators at Bioware, and informing people of the reasons as to why the game's facial animations are so low quality. However, Murnane compares Mass Effect: Andromeda to several other games, such as Uncharted and The Witcher 3. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a different game made by a different company, and while it's easy to compare, it's unfair since Bioware is a smaller company.

Overall, I agree with Murnane. Bioware's animators were likely not at fault here, and may have been rushed to finish the game so it could be released quickly. Bioware has been known to rush games, and were criticized for reusing assets from Dragon Age: Origins in Dragon Age 2 so it isn't rare to see this kind of criticism direct at Bioware's development team.

"Kagemono: The Shadow Folk" - Review

"Kagemono: The Shadow Folk" is a Disney animated short about a hungry fox looking for a meal. While it is searching , it runs into a fearful foe, and flees. After it runs away, the fox finds what looks like food, but is a trap! The "food" is a shadow creature that eats the fox's own shadow. Eventually, the fox's shadow is all gone and the fox has turned into a ghost. However, the foe from before comes back and eats the shadow creature, which returns the fox's shadow, and makes the fox alive again. It turns out that the "foe" just wanted to be friends. The fox and its new friend walk away into the forest together, no longer having misunderstandings of each other.

The animation is very well done and fluid. They frequently use squash and stretch to make their animations seem more lively.

The story was told through expression and actions rather than words. The animators did this very well, and made sure that everything was very lively.

The creators did a very good job at telling a somewhat dark story through cute characters. However, the world and backgrounds seemed very bleak, and could use more color.

Overall, I feel like the story was very well told, and that their animations were fun to watch. It wasn't boring in any way.

Explosion

This is a fake explosion applied to a video clip made in After Effects.

Scope of the project (goal)

One of our more recent projects was to learn elements of special effects through applying an explosion using various resources given to us to a provided video clip.

Process

To do this we had to learn by watching a video tutorial. If we followed along with the tutorial and did exactly as the instructor said, the final product generally came out looking pretty nice. I had a little bit of trouble figuring out timing on certain things, such as when to have the smoke come in after the explosion, or when the debris should hit the ground.

What did I learn?

While doing thisI learned how to better organize layers in After Effects. For this to work, you really need to have your layers in the right place, and doing that helped with my organization

What would I do differently?

I would probably try to fix some things with the timing, and try to add a camera shake of some kind. I can't really do anything about the people ignoring the explosion, but it would be cool if there was some kind of reaction.

What would I keep the same?

I like how my lighting came out, with the flash of light that reflects on the wall and overhangs of the building, so that's probably what I would keep.

My experiences

After completing this project, I feel like my files could be more organized and also now I know how to apply lighting while editing, rather than having to put some pieces of lighting in during filming.

Thoughts and conclusions

This project was really easy and fun for me. I like having a video to follow when I'm learning something new, since you can go back if you miss something.

How to make a 3D logo in Illustrator and Maya

Having a nice looking logo is pretty cool, but what if it was 3D? If your logo is made in Adobe Illustrator, you can make it happen.

1. Have your logo made in Illustrator

Don't worry about color, yet. Your logo will just show up grey in Maya anyway.

2. Convert your text to outlines

Once your logo is made, if it has any text in it, make sure you convert the type to outlines by selecting the "Type" menu on the bar up top and then selecting "Create Outlines". Otherwise, Maya wont be able to detect that something is there. After you create outlines, the text should look like the image on the right.

3. Saving your Illustrator file

Once you're ready to put your logo in Maya, save your Illustrator file as an "Illustrator 8" file. To do this, just use the menu that pops up after you save your file to whatever folder, and open the drop-down menu and select "Illustrator 8".

5. Importing to Maya

Make sure you have a new project made in Maya. Once you have your new project, go to the "create" menu, and then select "Adobe Illustrator Object", and find your file once the file viewer opens. You'll then see your logo as shown below.

At this point, you can mess with the thickness and bevel and such to your own tastes.
When you want to add color, just change the material of the object by right-clicking and selecting "assign new material". From there you can chose a material you like and then change the color in the attribute editor.