Week 5- Outside of Class

Since there was nothing assigned for the weekend beside submit our smashing magazine calendar files to the website. In my own time I worked on a design exercise. I was inspired by the colors I used in my calendar piece. So I created a business card will random names and information. The idea behind this company called Plumbago Borders is a flowerbed design company that works along fencing to plant flowers and I used a plumbago flower within the design to tie everything together.

Week 5B

Today was the final day before submitting to Smashing Magazine Calendar contest for the month of October. The following images will include both versions of my composition with and without the calendar. The sizes used are (1440 x 900), (1920 x 1200), (1280 x 800), (1024 x 1024), (320 x 480). Before uploading I needed to fill out a form and add them into one file then compress the file as a .zip file.

Week 5A

Today's goal was to finalize the final product of the October Calendar by including the smashing magazine logo and any final touches. Some extra pieces I added was fog behind the gate and changing up the calendar a little bit. To upload to the website we must had created 2 dimensional sizes and have them with and without the Calendar.

Week 4- Outside of Class

Over the weekend we were suppose to complete 75% of the composition. In this version I have added a house, trees, pathway, and the beginning of the calendar with the font called October Crow. I would also like to add that the background gradient in Week 4B and even in the photo below should be darker so I believe there was a quality issue.

Week 4B

The next part of the October calendar project was to complete 50% of the piece. In class I worked on creating the fence by making it very elaborate. To make my progress go quicker I would make a section then group the object and copy paste. I also made guides in order to make the fence straight.

Week 4A

After sketching more for my calendar, I choose to create a more abstract moonlight background. Although I'm not sure what exactly I want in my composition. Some options I have to place into my piece is corn stalks, haunted house, trees, fence, tomb stones, and maybe a few animals. Here is some images of sketches and my beginning background of my calendar. 

Week3- Outside of Class

Outside of class I watched several more videos on lynda.com. Some of the videos I watched included information such as working with fills and strokes, creating and editing gradients, creating shapes by using the path tool, using the blob brush and eraser tool to create path shapes, paintbrush, pencil tool, pen tool including curves and straight lines, type in Illustrator and working with images. Most things in the videos are repeated information but its always good to hear and watch the lesson over again because it becomes more natural every time you use the tools.

On top of watching videos I went out to take photos to help my process and developing research for my October calendar project. My idea is to make a haunted mansion or woods setting.

Week 3B

Creating a work of art should consist of brainstorming, drafts, final drafts and then the finished piece because once you have a piece finished and show someone else there will be feed back and that will make you want to finish your final draft even more. Earlier in the week I started brainstorming ideas for my calendar project. My general area of which I'm designing is a haunted mansion, creepy woods and animals you would consider to be associated with halloween.

Week 3A

Before starting a new project brainstorming is highly important. There are several types of brainstorming techniques, a few are mind mapping and mood boards. Mind mapping is also called "radiant thinking" which is a form of mental research that allows designers to quickly explore the score of a given problem, topic or subject area. To begin mind mapping it starts with a central term or idea that designers quickly plot out associated images and or concepts. In class our word was October and this is my outcome from that single term. 

Another type of brainstorming is called mood board or in simple terms setting the mood for what your project or document might look like without using the images on the mood board. Mood boards are a visual starting point to keep come up with ideas to help with the end result. The definition of a mood board is a proven technique used to organize ideas and inspiration in the early stages of production. Mood boards will help you pin down the visual feeling and direction of your work. Whether on the web or in print. Benefits of using mood boards is organization, jump start of creativity with a quick reference guide, and makes it easy to share early concepts with clients and colleagues. Some elements you might find on a mood board would be typefaces or fonts, color palettes, illustrations, designs, photos, and textures or patterns. 

For my mind mapping sheet I took one column from my plots and used it to create a mood board with the idea of October. 

Week 2- Outside of Class

Part of our weekly homework is to watch videos for essential training in Illustrator. Some videos I watched were working with color, working with fills and strokes, and working with paths. Under the color videos it talked about RGB and CMYK these are two different type of color pallets. RGB is red, green, and blue mostly seen in televisions, computer screens and tablets; designers use these colors when they are creating documents strictly for the web or screen. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black these colors are used for any type of print. CMYK is simply taking those four colors and overlaying one another to create other colors for print. In another video it talked about fills, strokes and how you can take objects and fill them with color or keep the outline of the object and only the stroke is shown with no fill. In illustrator understanding paths and anchor points are very important. Paths are the skeleton outline of objects or a line between two anchor points. Anchor points are the joints that hold the skeleton together or tell where the start and end of a path is. There are several different type of anchor points such as selected points, and control handles which mostly works with curved lines. With paths you can have closed or open paths. With paths that are closed you can join them or average them to create closed paths. To create open paths from closed paths you can use the scissors tool or knife tool to cut the closed path into two objects. The scissors tool creates clean cuts and the knife tool make curved cuts unless you hold (option + drag).

Week 2B

Illustrator takes lots of practice and thats simply what we have been doing in class. In today's lecture was more review about using the pen tool, pathfinder, and creating more shapes. One trick I never knew was that you could add or subtract the points in the star tool. Our exercise today dealt with recreating common logos by creating shapes, using the pen tool with outlines and fills, and cutting shapes with the knife tool.

The top image is my own copies of the logos and the bottom image consists of the originals.

Week 2A

Labor Day- No Class!

Week 1 -Outside of Class

Before jumping head first into a swimming pool you must test the waters by learning how to swim first. This is basically the same thing as using Illustrator. Before creating a work of art you must know the basics of Illustrator and master the tools to be able to produce the outcome you wish for.  You can either teach yourself the steps or use videos that show you the steps. One program that has it’s own source of videos and tutorials that you can try is Lynda.com. Lynda teaches all different levels from beginner to advance levels to meet the needs and questions for designers. Some videos I have watched talk about the different panels such as the tools panel that talks about the tools, control panels which brings up the controls for each tool then there is the panel system which operates all the heavy lifting in Illustrator where you can find color, layers, swatches, brushes and much more.