Graphic Design Semester Reflection

What I did this Semester

Vector Projects

One of my favorite projects we did was a unit of vectorized portraits. Now, my actual self portrait was not very good and I don't think it was a good representation of what I can do as a graphic designer. Both these projects shown above were not main projects. The wolf was extra credit and the cat was part of my halloween project. I only had two days to work of the cat and I spent all that time one the vectored side of it that I didn't get to make the font very neat or interesting. Same withe the background. The vectorized cat took two days to make and the wolf took only one, challenges I faced in these projects were time management and making them both look realistic like their photos. I learnt a lot about the pen tool and color schemes while doing these projects. The only feedback I really got from my peers was that they looked really good, not much was said on the improvement side of it. From my wolf project to my cat, one thing I changed was detail. In the cat you can obviously tell there's a lot more shapes and colors so it really took a lot of time to get it to look right. I'm really proud on how this project turned out, I like using the pen tool and vectorizing things is definitely a strength of mine.

Infographics

Another unit we did I found fun and interesting was infographics. Above is the infographic I made, about cats and dogs, of course. This project took me about a school week to make, including planning time and research. The infographic itself was very easy to set up in Illustrator, the thing that took the most time was figuring out the placement of everything for my infographic and the research. I learned what makes a good infographic, and more tricks to use in Illustrator. A challenge I faced was making it look like a professional infographic. While I think it doesn't look too bad, some things could use fixing. Some feedback I got was making the text in the circles more readable, as well as changing some of the colors and placements to make it more connected. Over time of making this project, I changed the circles and moved them to make room for the graph at the bottom. The graph was one of the last things I made. Overall, I really enjoyed this project and I think it inspired me to try harder in my graphic design career.

Time Management 

I have used my time in class fairly well for the most part. In the first quarter my time management wasn't very good but during the second quarter I think I really stepped up my game to try a lot harder in this course and get things done well and on time. I stayed productive in class by doing a couple extra credit assignments whenever I had the time. Outside of class I do a lot of drawing. Art is a passion of mine so I think designing things in my free time helps with this course.

Strengths

My areas of strength as a graphic designer is definitely my knowledge of how to use the applications. The design part of it can also be good at times, as I believe my designs are a little bit above average, I think. or at least are average. I put a lot of time into improving my work if I can, but working Illustrator(especially the pen tool), comes really easy to me.

Improvements

While I know how to work Illustrator fairly well, I think the more complicated parts of it are what i need to work on the most. I know how to make out things accurately in Illustrator, but there's always room for improvement. This goes for my designing too, some parts of it I'm great at but then you hit certain points in your projects that you know something looks off, but you don't know how to fix it. I think every artist has ran into that problem at one point or another.

Summary

This semester I loved doing the vectorized things. they were a fairly easy concept for me to grasp and I mastered it in no time. I think over this semester I think I want have tried harder. Especially first quarter because I hated it at first but I grew to love graphic design as one of my favorite classes. My learning this semester definitely improved my work ethic in this class and my motivation to do better. My only goal for next semester is to keep improving. I think if I continue to get better, I'll have the potential to be a great graphic designer.

Portfolio Reflection Blog

The first project I feel the most proud of is my Pen project. I liked this project because it shows how I've improved in Maya over the semester. I learned a lot about 3d modeling this semester and I feel this project shows what I have learned. I f I had to change it, I would make the edges smoother, but other than that I think it turned out pretty well. I feel my strength in this project is making it look realistic by the textures added on. My weakness was making the bumps in the grip, which I didn't exactly know how to do. I didn't learn this project because it was a test of my skills, but knowing that I think I did pretty well on it. I feel like I did really well on this one because I really tried on the lighting and overall object. I'm also really proud that I actually got it done in time and turned it in on time. Overall, I'm just really proud of how I improved over the semester in Maya.




The second project my favorite is is my hammer project. In this project, we learned how to bevel objects and a bit about spotlight lighting. To improve this one I would definitely make it brighter when rendered, but we had just introduced lighting at this point and I was gone when we were working on the project. So, for missing some things, I feel like I did pretty well. The materials on the hammer aren't as good as the pen project(which I see as my best work thus far), but considering it was an earlier project, it's not that bad. I like this project because it taught me more about the extrude tool, and I used that a lot on my pen project so it was really helpful. I like that the hammer actually looks like a hammer, I don't know but it kinda looks cute. If it wasn't so dark. In conclusion, this project was more like a basis to my final and I'm pretty proud of that. It taught me a lot as well.

My next project is my Ice Cream Model. This project was important because it taught me how to animate in Maya. While it isn't my best modeling, as I was rushed to animate it, I still think it's a valuable project that needs to be included. I did like how I animated it and the texturing isn't that bad. However, I could definitely have improved in the lighting and the realism in the project. Some of the ice cream is sticking out of the bowl and the ice cream scoop is in the table a little bit. But other than that I think I did pretty good on my project and the animation was done fairly well. The animation itself was pretty simple once I got the hang of it. Even if I did need some help with it at first, I think that that was definitely my strength in this project. My weaknesses were definitely the lighting and proportional modeling, even if the modeling itself was pretty simple. I hope to be able to apply the animations to different works in Maya in future projects in this course.



This next project definitely isn't my best project, but it had important aspects in the making of the project that helped me with my final. I'm proud of the transparency I did at the bottom and the texturing on the cap. The lighting definitely could be improved and I would change that if I could, I think the problem was that I was behind on the project and was in a rush to turn it in so that I could start on my final. There needs to be more lighting on the background so that it doesn't look like its floating in space. However, even if the background is way too dark and bland, the lighting on the cap really shows of the texture and realism of the object. I have greatly improved in my lighting skills, as you can tell in my pen project. However the shape and lofting was a critical part of this project and the steps taken to make this project will be needed in future projects to come.




My walk cycle in animation is my final project I'm most proud of. This is my best work that I made in After Effects. It was really simple to animate in after effects and I think my animation was my best part in this project. I think I would want to improve the background and make it match my character  more. My strength is the animation and the weakness is the quality of the background. I learnt how to make a walk cycle and how to scan my drawings in, which is how I made the dog. The background is made in photoshop, which is why it doesn't match. All in all, I think this animation was fairly decent and probably my best and most essential animation in After Effects.

Tutorial For Maya

For this tutorial I’m going to show how to give your objects materials/textures in Maya and which specific ones you use for each texture you want.




First of all, to make it easier, I’d be best if your object is in object mode.


Once it is, right click and hold on top of your object. When you do that, a menu will pop up.
In that menu, continue right click holding and drag it down to an option that say “Assign New Material”. Let go of the click while on top of that option.


After you’ve opened that option, a new menu should pop up that has a list of materials. You can look around at each of the materials to see which one you want, but in case that takes up too much time, the two basic materials are Blinn and Lambert. Lambert is the default and while making objects in Maya, I wouldn’t recommend using Lambert unless it works with the object you’re making.


Once you’ve clicked on the material you want, you can then go to the attribute editor.(the box on the right side of the screen where you can control the specifics of your object)
In the attribute editor, there should be a tab at the top that says the name of whichever texture you chose and then a 1.
In that tab, you can change the color and extra texture of the material. You can customize it to whichever way you see fits with your object.


That’s it!

Animation Article Review

The article I did my review on is an article written by Robin Wilding at Full Sail University. The article was titled “The Future of Animation Is... A Look into Industry Professional's Animated Crystal Balls
”. For writing this article, the author interviewed several professional animators on what they thought the future of animation would be. The three most common ideas the majority of the interviewed animators had was that story, 3d, and mobile capabilities will be the future of animation. The author did not show any bias in his article, as some of the animators may have had similar ideas, but they all brought new insight to the overall effectiveness of the article. There is no solution to be found in the article, as there isn’t much of a claim either. The article itself was mainly seen to me as to provide new ideas and innovation to what animation could be. The article had no argument either, but none of it was needed in order to understand the message of the overall article. However, you can make the claim that the arguments are each of the animator’s claims as to what they think the future of animation will be. With that interpretation, the evidence and argument is very strong. Each animator had enough reasoning to back up each of their claims. There is no conclusion to the article either, but that’s part of what makes it interesting because its open ended. It’s not about “here’s the claims and evidence and here’s the end” it’s about how the article could impact you, and what you do with the claims the animators gave. One thing I don’t understand about the article is that a couple of the animators briefly talk about the economics of animation, which of course, I can’t understand because I’m still a teenager and am not making my career in animation, I don’t think. As a young animator and graphic designer, this article gives me some insight as to what I should prioritize in my work to be more successful. This article isn’t a normal article about the animation industry but about what the animation industry could be. The article is very interesting and worth a quick read.


Article link here: http://www.animationcareerreview.com:8080/articles/future-animation-look-industry-professionals-animated-crystal-balls

Professional Animation Review

For my animation review, I did mine on an animation by a CalArts student called "in/ex troversion." You can watch it here:
in/ex troversion from Julia Rodrigues on Vimeo.

The animation is about a girl who goes to a party and gets continuously tired from the party. I liked how this animation used the idea of a battery charging to represent how some people get emotionally drained after a lot of social interaction. The animation flowed really well, and by the looks of the art style, it looks like a frame by frame animation. I would definitely love to to apply my art style to my work like she does and I already know how to do frame by frame animations. The creator did really well on telling the story without voice overs, you could understand the story just by watching it. I think the work could improve by making the details more consistent, as the clothes sometimes had wrinkles, and other times, they didn't. Overall, I think this is a really well made animation and it turned out really well.

Story Animation Project

 For my Story Board animation, I couldn't finish it because I spent all my time on the keyframes instead of the animation. I did try really hard on trying to make it look nice, but I didn't get to finish the animation, unfortunately.

The Story

I was planning on animating the teddy bear as a toy come to life. The bear wanted to get out of the house he was in to see what the outside was like. The meadow shown was going to be what the outside of the window looked like. I had originally put the bear's limbs in different layers to animate him from the side, but the side view of the bear didn't look as good as the 3/4 view. 

The Process

The bear and the meadow were both drawn outside of photoshop with a bamboo wacom drawing tablet. The animation process, of what little I got done, was done in Adobe After Effects. I used the puppet pin tool for animating a walk cycle.

Cats Vs Dogs Infographic

For this project I made an infographic about cats and dogs. I am very passionate about both cats and dogs so I decided to make my project about them both. The layout was fairly simple, as all i did was make circles and put text in them. The dog and cat graphics in the middle were made using the vector pen tool. My information was fairly easy to get as well, the links are at the bottom of the infographic. The graph was also really easy to make as it was a simple design. For the colors I chose a palette that would appeal to the younger audience, such as millennial as I think that category of people would be most interested in my infographic.

Raccoon Project

In this project, I made a raccoon in Adobe Illustrator.  I then added in handwritten text and some acorns to make a postcard. The project itself was pretty simple, all I really had to do was make shapes and use a lot of anchor points. 

Landscape Man Challenge

I learned more about how to use photoshop and the tools that we use in it. The main tools i used are the Content Aware fill tool, the Patch tool, the clone stamp and healing brush, and the spot healing brush. my favorite skill is the spot healing brush because it's simple and effective. My strength is blending and my weakness is removing parts from clothing. I would take out the loose strings on the tuxedo and I like the clouds as the hair I just wish it would blend better. I liked this project because it included creativity and let me do my own thing.

e-Communication Final Reflection

Bri Hart   

Hour 2

5/16/16

e-Communication Reflection

I learned many things in e-Comm. I learned a lot about Collaboration, time management, and how to work certain technologies. I learned that web design is really hard and working photoshop is also hard to work with. Working with others is more difficult than I thought it would be. I also got a lot of late projects so I learned that I should get them in on time.

I learnt it by making lots of mistakes. I basically screwed up lots of things and learnt how to make it better. I also learned by practice and just playing around with the technology.

It is important because I am an INFP. I am normally introverted so talking with people and collaborating helps. Also I want get a degree in animation and visual arts so any practice helps.

My greatest strengths  are graphic design and animation. You can tell by my blog posts for it, like my logo and multiple of my animation projects. My weaknesses are using the apps we use for graphic design and animation. I’ve improved by learning more techniques for each strand and how to make it better. Also web design was not my forte.

I am going to take what I learned to an art college. I want to major in animation mainly so I will practice it and apply it to get in. Same with graphic design, I also think a visual arts major would be nice.

I would change some of my earlier projects. I would make the animations flow better and also make my colors in my design projects better. I also would change some of the storylines in my videos.

I think this year has been helpful in deciding what strands I want to go into. Also it has helped to see what I’m doing in the future when choosing strands. Basically I will go into graphic design and animation and hope to learn more.

Boomerang Ball- Final Project

Our team name is Slayer and our product is the Boomerang Ball. What we did best together was be able to come up with conclusions and our worst was getting stuff done on time. Next time I'll make sure to have better time management. I would make our website better, but we don't have time or else it would have been better. I have improved by being better at Graphic design and animation, along with video. I haven't improved much in web design. I helped with the website- I wrote the info for it, I made the logo and the animation.

Animation-https://youtu.be/pA9c-vwDeNI





Website- 

Logo-

Emo(Video)

This is my first video I made in e9 video class! Ft. My friend Lizzie, and Jacob.