Graphic Design: Business Card & Postcard

   My business cards were based off a moo card. I made each with an elegant circle design with my initials inside.

   Next, I created more business card layouts and tried different types, gradients, and patterns. I next made more cards and lay a picture behind it with curvy letters for my initial. My backs of my cards included my logo.

    My postcard consists of a quote and the person's logo. This quote connects with people because it motivates them to push back any evil tendencies and overcome them. It tells people that their bad admissions are only controlled by themselves.

Animation: Professional Article Review

Intro:

     Rise of The Guardians is about a group of characters coming together to fight against the dark forces known as the boogeyman. The group consists of the Tooth Fairy, Santa, Easter Bunny, and the new guardian, Jack Frost. This article will cover how each of the guardians' effects were made through animation.

Sandman:

      Sandman is the dream maker of all the children and people around the world. His effects of golden sand flying through the air is made by the effects department. The effects made include airplanes, unicorns, and even dinosaurs. The sand shapes were made through conceptualizing(Form a concept or idea of something) the shapes. The modeling of the sand is completed with using sub-division surfaces that would phase volumetrically. These faces would soon be filled in with points inside Side Effects Houdini. It was said there were complications with shapes holding form, the real challenge proved to be when attempting to create a nice fluid simulation of the sands.

     To make the fluid effect of sand, a few techniques were used. Binding points to different objects were required. For example, when making a sand unicorn move around, the effects team bound different parts of the unicorn and also unbound them throughout the animation. Finally, the last step was achieved through Houdini. Messing with the operating performance tasks, achieved a fluid and smooth animation. The final format of the rendered animation was OpenVDB.

Boogeyman:

     The movie's antagonist is known as Pitch, the Boogeyman. A similar technique was used to create the "dark sand." However, instead of creating a nice, smooth, fluid motions, a new view was made. Taking the same concepts and ideas, the angles and points of the sand were made to be more dark and creepy. Extrusion was also used to create a dark aftereffect of the sands. Vertices of the horses' legs were taken and extruded to create a dark and spooky trail. Finally, changing the transparency of the legs and replacing it with particle hits made the horses look as if they were running and fading off the more they ran.

Jack Frost:

     The main character of the film is known as Jack Frost. As we all know, Jack Frost is known as the spirit of winter. Jack Frost's ability to turn everything cold required multiple teams to work together to create a slow taking over of ice. The effects team sought out a very naturalistic approach. The developers would take a model, and then run a cellular automata simulation on it. The cellular automata simulation is a process if you cover a surface in particles, and turn one particle on, the rest will react and turn on as well. The effect is said to be "kind of like at a sporting event where they have The Wave." Even though the animation of slow taking over an object is complete, the frost effect is still to be done. The frost cold effect is made by tracing millions of line over the surface of the cellular automata simulation.

Santa's Portal:

    Santa's magical portals to travel through space in the movie were made through adding snow elements and bursts. The portal effect required a little outside help. The effects team wanted to make it look like the portals would have depth to it if thrown. For example, if the snow globe were to be through 20 ft in front of you, or on a wall, the effects team wanted to make it look as if it is going back 20 ft or on a wall. To achieve this effect, they worked with a Nuke artist and they rendered a depth map of a portal. The depth is achieved through altering the offsets of the project.

Review:

    The article talks about how some effects to Rise of The Guardians were created. The effects team used different programs to create different effects. One of the more used ones is the Houdini program. I think this article was very appealing and also informational due to its explanations of the effects.

Source: https://www.fxguide.com/featured/rise-of-the-effects/

Shadows

Clipping Masks

Famous Logos

Graphic Design: Technical Tutorial

    The paintings in Van Gogh's secret gallery of paintings consists of grabbing a desired picture to paint, then using the different styles of brushes and then mixing colors.

 The painting was used with about 5 different brushes and different mixes. Afterwards, touching up the painting with wet paint to mix colors and edges easier to create a smooth and "filled" feelings to it.

Animation: Personal Project Review Animation Story

      My animation story is made with adobe photoshop and adobe after effects. My end product was a human going through the change of turning into a werewolf. This would be an example of man vs self. The beginning of the story doesn't start with a creepy forest under the moonlight, but rather with a storyboard.

    After mapping out a storyboard, I decided on which scenes I wanted to use and which ones I wouldn't use. Upon deciding on which ones to and not to use, I redrew my storyboard with more detail and description. I then drew all the pictures needed to recreate the scenes. Next, I scanned in the drawings then colored and altered them in Photoshop.

       After drawing out all the scenes and coloring them, the project was close to an end. I then imported the files into AfterEffects and started to create the scenes. The end result of the timing and editing looked a little like this.

    Even with the editing and timing done there were a few tweaks made along the way. The werewolf change was made with using pre-made effects. The specific one I used was called "CC force blur." This is the same exact effect that is used to make the Flash's speedy run possible. I simply messed with the direction, shading, and how much blur to apply and the effect was complete. The end product is finished.

Personal Logos

    My personal logo designs underwent the process of planning, designing, and producing. I started with making 20 thumbnail sketches of different ideas for logos. I then picked my top three and made them in Adobe Illustrator. I also took the concept art of one of my logos and turned it into a monogram/word mark.

Floating Bolognies

   The floating mountain was created in Adobe Photoshop. The floating island's contrast was created by messing around with the hue of the jumped island layer. The extra add ons are made by editing differing pieces of art together and scaling them down in size with the island. The bottom of the floating island is created with the clone stamp.

The Secret Gallery of Van Gogh's Paintings

Graphic Design: Professional Article Review

     This article discussed how rules work in graphic design and how to "break" them (rules) correctly. The article claims to break rules you first need to know them. In graphic design it relates to the themes and concepts of different designs. The third point that the author makes is anarchy is about pushing not only your own boundaries and expectations, but those of the client as well (Creative Anarchy at Its Very Best article). The author argues that to break the rules you must first learn them and push/ break the rules. To support this claim the author uses anecdotes from different people to relate back to the author's point.

     The article's point was set across in a very strong fashion but some of the paragraph's contradict one another. For example, it would talk about no more ideas but the next paragraph would be about new ideas. The paragraphs and evidences were used in a way to support the argument but not clear enough to be "reliable."

     Breaking the rules in the "correct" fashion seems to be ending argument. To break the rules you must first learn them. The author's main points were very repetitive and failed to show different standing points in the argument. The evidence is convincing to a point, but at the same time fails to reveal different or even opposing views that would contradict the author's. I will be applying the three steps in graphic design to my design process. I will start with design history, take risks, and stay open.

     Comprehension was very easy to understand and used user friendly terms. The only term that was vague was "jonin."

     My thoughts on this article is that it was very easy to understand and straight to the point. But it failed to support its argument. The evidence used  was very whimsical and vague. This blogpost was written after reading Creative Anarchy at Its Very Best.

Graphic Design: Patterns

Graphic Design: Pattern Designs

       Motif

             Radial designs are very unique because they don't work like other patterns. They don't repeat if you connect the sides or repeat if you place them side to side. These types of designs only work from one point of origin.

     Repeating Pattern

   

              My repeating pattern is revolved around the same idea as my motif. I was interested in circular designs and wanted to involve it in my pattern. I soon settled on creating a pattern that reminded me of Van Gogh's famous Starry Night.

Animation: Technical Tutorial

   The purpose of this animation was to get a simple understanding of how multi-plane animation works and how to animate it properly. This skill is very important to animators because in the field of animation you need to know a little bit of everything to be successful. Animation is all about telling the story and all stories go to an end. Using multi-plane animation is just one simple way to tell a story in a quick and elegant fashion.

        Tutorial:

1. The first step to creating an animation is to first create the images. Using photoshop, start by creating a 5000 x 480px canvas.
   
2. On your photoshop canvas, start by creating multiple layers by duplicating the background. To duplicate this layer, select the background layer, right click and select duplicate layer.
   
3. Now for the fun part. Painting the multi-plane canvas is tricky. While painting, keep a few things in mind. The objects closest to you, will move the fastest. The layers further back will move less and less. Make sure you paint on the correct layer and to label them. Labeling them will make them easier to identify in Adobe AfterEffects.
4. After completing the painting process of the canvas, save your .psd file.
5. Open your canvas file (.psd) in Adobe AfterEffects. 
6. If opened correctly, you should see different layers in your Adobe AfferEffects. Click and drag them into the time bar.
   
   
   
   
7. Organize the layers appropriately
8. Select the desired layer to animate and press "P"
• You will notice that a drop down menu appears. This is the positioning panel.
9. Start by moving the layers/ objects to desired start  location.
10. Create a starting keyframe by clicking on the stopwatch.
11. Move the layers across the screen while keeping a straight line by holding shift while dragging.
12. Do this with all the layers

• Keep in mind that the further layers move less and the closer layers move more

   13.You have now created your animation. Preview the animation by pressing spacebar. When your animation is at the point where you want it, export it.

• To export, Goto File
• Export
• Add to Render Que
• Change to desired settings
• Click Render

Creative Designs

Graphic Design: Creative Designs


My Final Piece of Work



    My final piece was a creative piece. I really wanted to make something new and different. I ended up deciding on a deck of cards and a pair of dice. These two objects compliment each other because they are both used in many gambling situations or tricks. I relate very closely to my design of the cards because I like performing magic tricks. I think a deck of cards means different things to different people, some view them as it is, just a deck of cards. Some however, view them as I do. A form of life. When performing magic tricks it gives you such a satisfying feeling that is unexplainable.

Process of Creation

While creating these three pieces I was thinking about what I wanted the end project to look like and what it was going to take to get it there. For my normal pencil, I had to think of what it was suppose to look like to be able to edit it appropriately.

Creative Pencil
     My creative pencil was a bit different. I knew I wanted to make something that I could relate to (Explained in next paragraph). I made my original pencil base then decided on what I could do to make it different. I finally settled on a pencil, but with a spade on it.













What I Learned


   During this project my 3 big take aways are how a graphic designer can connect to their art, how their work represents them, and how to make different and varying pieces of art.

Animation Personal Project Review

     The scope of the project involved using photoshop and adobe aftereffects. It required pre-knowledge about photoshop. The process of the project included the idea, creating it and then exporting it. The idea was making a ball bounce across the screen. The ball however, would look realistic and circular with shading/ lighting. The bounce process would include adding a realistic bounce motion and adding a squash and stretch effect. After the editing was complete, we rendered out our bounce animation and made it into a video. Along the way, I learned how to better animate objects and how to create a project so it can be animated. If I were to do this project over again, I would change my grass color. My grass color wasn't as green as I would've liked it to be at the end. I would keep my ball color and motions the same. My experiences during this project will better prepare me for my future ones because I now know how to better create objects and how to make it more realistic. I thought that this project was overall very helpful because it gave us a chance to incorporate and use different programs to create a pretty neat animation.

Exploring Graphic Design: Que Graphico Designo

         

Graphic design is a way of expressing yourself. There are many different ways to express yourself. One way is to send a message. Sending a message is very important because it communicates yourself with the viewers. It also creates a connection and helps relate you to the viewers.  Graphic design is a form of art. Art doesn't have to be in the form of paint or pencil. It can be in the form of letters or numbers. Art is such a broad area of topic that everyone can be a part of it whether you're an artist or not.

           Another personal connection I made during the video is that the design is almost everything. When a design is created, that design isn't JUST a design. It speaks for whatever it represents. I love how any sort of design, can mean whatever you want. It amazes me how one piece of art can connect to anyone because it means different things to different people.

           The final connection I made is possible the best one. I love how art and graphic design can connect you to anyone. Although similar to my last connection, I feel that connecting people by itself is rewarding enough to earn its own point. Connecting to people and breaking the ice is always difficult at first. But with graphic design or art, it makes it that much easier. Everyone has a different interpretation and therefore it can connect everyone.

           Watching the video taught me a few interesting points. It taught me not what graphic design is, but what being a graphic designer means. It means representing people and your artwork. It also taught me how art and graphic design connects people in ways that I have never previously thought about.

Final's Blog Post

Commercial Video:

       
           For the commercial video we decided as a group to do an infomercial and everyone in the group participated and contributed with our ideas and thoughts to make and produce our final product. As a group, we came up with a way to make our video entertaining and informational by using the six shot sequence and the three second rule. We used overlays so that when someone was talking, after a 2-3 seconds we should switch to another film of the person or someone else doing something so we don't lose our viewers. The six shot sequence was very helpful to help create our video and be able to make our video look much more professional and top notch. For the video, I made the storyline of the video and made the story board. The video was made to show the simplicity of the watch and how it affects and helps the everyday man/woman. What if your relative or friend was hurt and no one was there to help and you're stuck in traffic? That's a life. A life that has a future and a heartbeat. With the GeoWatch Traveler, that heartbeat can continue to beat on. YOU can be there in seconds and save your friend or relative.






Graphics:

          Graphic Design was my branch in the project. I designed the logo, coupon, and whatever else needed to be done. Let's start with the logo. The GeoWatch Logo is made of four circles intersecting one another in the center. Each circle is a different color, and each color has a different meaning. For starters, the colors not only have meanings, but also represent different cultures and the center would be the point where they all meet. I.E. the GeoWatch Traveler brings cultures and people from all around the world together through travel. The color blue represents innovation and technology, but also represents trust. The yellow circle is associated with happiness or joy, all of which and even more can be achieved through the GeoWatch Traveler. The red circle connects to the feeling of passion, or love. Everyone loves things that help the world rather than destroy it, and the GeoWatch Traveler is economically friendly! That's why the last circle is green. Green represents nature, growth, harmony, freshness, safety, and environment. With a simple logo such as ours, it can also mean many different things. Thought and even more thought is what it took to make the logo. It's easy to remember, easy on the eyes, and represents so much! But, none of those points are the best part of the logo. The best part of the logo, is that every person views the logo differently. Each and every color or circle can mean something different to you. It can be a happy memory, a first kiss, or even your first stuffed animal as a kid. This GeoWatch Logo is among the top logos because it's not what we're trying to say, it's what the LOGO's trying to say. The coupon is a much different story. It was hard enough to design everything by Illustrator, but the actual hardship was deciding on how it was going to look. I wanted the coupon to be like the logo. Simple enough to remember, easy on the eyes, and look professional. I must've looked at hundreds of coupons before designing the now current coupon. But the first design, wasn't the last. I made 4-7 coupons before I made the current one. I had to make the informational text at the bottom of the coupons and alter the logo for the coupon. Now, the GeoWatch Traveler is $149.99. So $50 off is 1/3 of the price. But the point I wanted to make, was that the GeoWatch Traveler isn't and wasn't made so the owners of the company could sit back and sip ice tea in the Caribbean, not saying that we don't, but the Traveler was made for something greater. It was made for the people, and not the the money. The Traveler was inspired by us to make the product for the people. With the GeoWatch Traveler, you can be anywhere in seconds and make everyone that owns it lives' so much easier. GeoWatch's future for the company is not to make more money, but rather to help the people. With that goal in mind I decided I was going to make the coupon $50 off. This product was not made the rich, or the poor, but for the people. Everyone can own the GeoWatch Traveler now that it's only a low price of $99.99.


















Website Screenshots:

             The GeoWatch Website was designed by and coded by Jacob, but the content was written by me. I wrote the disclaimer notice at the bottom of the website thus removing the company from any responsibility of a misuse of our product. I also added in a few sample locations and in the sidebar is a summary and goal of GeoWatch. The website would include the information of the watch, what it was made of, and many more! I describe the product, explain why everyone would need one, and included a detailed description of what the product looks like. All in all, making the GeoWatch product just as important as water.





Animation

          The overview of the product is very simple yet elegant. I designed the basic design of the GeoWatch Traveler and Kierstyn revised upon it. I made the watch have a digital screen by making the opacity lower. The GeoWatch design was simple and elegant so we decided to use mine. The Watch was easily designable and could be changed (Colors, text, etc.) easily. With that, the packaging was a breeze. The Watch was changed and recolored to match the packaging.






What I learned

           Throughout the year I learned a truckload of skills. I learned how to design, how to make a website, logos, and videos. I was more successful in the field of graphic design and animation so I took on that role in the group project. I used my skills and made a beautiful logo and a professional looking watch. These products required skills in Sketch-Up and Adobe Illustrator. But not all skills are physical. Some skills required for the product would include imagination. I think that going into the branch of e-Communication, imagination was one of my strongest suits. But after finishing one year in e-Communication, I think my imagination was different. Being able to make my ideas real made me imagine differently. I imagined what would a high tech watch look like? What would a travel related logo or commercial look like? With those thoughts in mind, I imagined, and made the logo, coupon, and the watch. I also made the storyboard and helped with the storyline of the video. I was an ISFP. Meaning that I am an introvert. But that's not the interesting part. When we took our "What Animal Are You?" quiz, I got a lion. Going into the quiz I thought for sure I was going to be an otter or a golden retriever. But while I was answering and rating my preferences, I noticed that none of the questions connected to me. I thought that the questions had nothing to do with me and I couldn't care less about some of them. An ISFP got a lion. Even our sub found it interesting. Introverts are usually quiet, and extroverts are usually the ones that end up getting lion. But during our project I tried to take on that lion role, and the end product turned out fairly well. Though I would've preferred to be an otter or golden retriever the way through, I still found that being a lion, weather I enjoyed it or not, was very helpful.
             The process if making the end product took a lot of work. It took a lot of sketching and try/fail before making it to what out is today. After making the final products (Watch), it still took a lot of revising before it looked the way we wanted it to.
             If I could do something differently next time it would be the planning. The planning during this project wasn't great and I ended up having to stay after to finish someone else's work. However, if I could do this project again, I would keep the logo the same. I really enjoyed my end product with the logo and wouldn't change a thing about it.
            We made this teleportation device to help the people. It would make everyones' lives so much easier if they would just give the GeoWatch Traveler a chance.



      ~Ben Ng
        Hr. 1
        May 20, 2015

Photoshop Blog

  During the process of making the butterfly, I learned how to change different colors and add different types of effects to the picture. Changing from Illustrator to Photoshop was an easy transition. I prefer Photoshop over Illustrator because of the easier navigation of tools and the wide variety of choices that come with Photoshop. I think Photoshop is the best use for making photos much better by putting in, or taking out objects. I think Illustrator has a much more different use. Illustrator is used for more creating objects and shapes such as logos.

  While I was making the Northwest overlay, I learned how to clean out the inside of a text and place a picture in the background. After finishing the Northwest overlay, it gave a very clean and professional finish to the project. If I were to do this project again in Illustrator I think I would have more trouble than photoshop. Once again, making the transition from Illustrator to Photoshop was fairly easy especially for this project. Putting overlays into photos with backgrounds can be very difficult in Illustrator, but in Photoshop there was a quick and easy way to do it.

  The ONW Compass was among one of the easier ones to make. It only required a few clicks and touch ups to make a very professional and clean look to it. I learned how to change the opacity from bolder to fading. While I was messing with the layers, I also learned how placing different pictures on different layers could give a much different look to the project. For example if I were to place the ONW letters in the front and the ONW Compass in the back it would give a much more awkward look to it than having the ONW Compass in the front. I think that using Photoshop instead of Illustrator was a lot easier for this project.

   This project was by far the most difficult out of the four. It required much more steps and more in depth explanations to do a good job on it. Using more than two pictures to fit onto one singular one proved more difficult than it seems. Especially since I tried to make it look more professional and clean. However, as difficult as this project was, I learned a few valuable skills.I learned how to trim photos in a specific shape rather than a square crop by using the layer mask tool. I also learned how to use the clone tool to delete specific parts of a picture. I think for this specific project I would've liked to use Illustrator to clean up some pictures before moving to Photoshop to finish it.

Personal Logo

          Personal Logo

        The color behind my personal logo is revolved around two colors, black and white. It makes the white more dominate and  clean looking and placing it onto a black background makes it darker. The two colors are complete opposites. A dark and a light. The two colors complement each other and make the other brighter/darker in comparison. I chose black and white as the two colors associated with the logo because I've always thought that choosing two colors such as black and white made a cleaner and much more professional outcome and final project.
         The shape of the logo is circular placed in a square background. The square background makes it more stable and solid. While the circle makes it seem more flexible and moveable. I chose the circle as the base logo shape because it seemed very moveable and easily changed. The idea of making the circle only consist of an outline and not filled in was because of my idea. I wanted to make the circle, not a circle. I made three lines cutting through around the outer ring of the circle. The cuts are located at the points when the lines of the letter cut in and out. The first one is located at the cut in at the top of the letter "B." The second and third cut ins are at the top and bottom of the letter "N." I decided to make cut ins to make my shape unlike others. To add an unique touch.
         Throughout making my personal logo, I've learned how to make claw marks by simply drawing lines and changing the line and adding an outline color that is complementary to the other. This logo can affect and mean something differently to every person. To me, it resembles a solid, but still flexible lifestyle. But also at the same time, open to changing and new ideas. The square makes me feel like it's a solid lifestyle and the circle makes me feel very flexible. But the most important part is the cut ins around the circle, those make me feel very open to new ideas and adapting to a new lifestyle.
       The process of this project was first creating many thumbnail sketches, then choosing from one, or all of them, and creating it in Adobe Illustrator. If I were to do this project again, I would keep the idea of a circle as the base of the logo. However, if I were to change something and do something new, I would like to try using different colors. Some that don't complement each other and also, use more colors.

Pathfinder

         Pathfinder helps create shapes that cannot be created under normal circumstances. The shape to the right are the shapes I have created with Pathfinder. Pathfinder lets you utilize a whole new skill set of editing and illustrating. It allows you to edit the points of the shapes and move the shape to the back or to the front, or to delete the center intersection shape. During the process of creating new shapes with pathfinder, I have learned how to take out the intersection of two or more shapes, combine shapes, and take out of put in a shape. Using pathfinder I was able to create a vast variety of shapes and fillings. The most important skill that I have learned during this, is how to subtract from a shape. This specific skill allows me to unlock thousands of new shapes besides the ones created by adding or subtracting the intersection. Subtracting from a shape creates a very complex and simply amazing looking shape.