Getting Involved

I just picked up two new responsibilities today.

One of the sophomores started a group in VC this year that pairs up a senior with one or two juniors and one or two sophomore vc majors.  It's a really good program because students in all 3 years of the major get to see what each other is doing, and offer advice, as well as just meet and get closer to other vc majors.  Today, he asked me and two other sophomores to take over for him next semester.  Its a cool opportunity and I'm up for the challenge.

The other thing that happened was that Bill Deering (Head of VC department) came into my type class and asked me to participate in a spring project that focuses on fashion.  He said that they need a male perspective.  I'm a little worried about if this will become time consuming, but I think I will be able to balance it and my coursework.  It's another great oppurtunity.

History Of Type Poster

17" x 11"

Black Plaka

The assignment following the abstract letterform compositions was to design an analog poster displaying something about our font that we learned through our research.

My typeface was Akzidenz Grotesk.  Helvetica was designed based on Akzidenz Grotesk by changing some minor details.  It would be basically impossible for an untrained eye to even notice that these two fonts are different.  After spending a good amount of time with it, I feel like I know the font pretty well, but there are still some things that could probably slip by me.  I decided to design my poster around the idea that Helvetica is a poor copy of Akzidenz Grotesk.  It fools some people, but good designers know where Helvetica came from and for that reason, many designers stay loyal to the precursor font.

Specifications for poster:

11" x17"

Black, White, and one Color (optional, only to be used with good reason)

Medium is Gouache, Plaka, or Ink

Must display Font

Must display Font name

Must display Designer Name

Illustrator Self Portrait

The current project (due Friday) in MacLab is to create a self Portrait of ourselves using vectors on Illustrator.  This could be a trace, or a charicature...whatever.  I went for more of a realistic look, but it's still graphic and interpretational.  The colors are obviously not true to life, but value-wise, I tried to make them fairly accurate.

Abstract Letter Compositions

Part 1: Full Letters

15" x 20"

a,b,g,h,o

My font: Akzidenz Grotesk

Black Plaka

Part 2:

50 Abstract Compositions from letters => 2 Gridded Compositions

The arrangement of each square in the grid is just as

important as the composition of each individual square.

17" x 17"

Black Gouache

Time for HELL

Yesterday, we got assigned the fourth illustration project.

It's called "One Hundred and One" or 101 Solutions.

Every upperclassman I've talked to says that this is the worst, most dreaded project in all of VC.


Basically, the project is to choose an object from a list of about 7 she gave us, and draw 100 different ideas of it.  For example.  If your object was spider, you could draw:

• a spider
• spider veins
• spider man
• a web
• a bite
• silk
• etc... anything that portrays the idea of "spider"
• try even thinking of more than say...20 different ideas

This is the list of things we could choose from:

• Sun
• Ant
• Turtle
• Manhole Cover  (...Really?)
• Lightbulb
• Cherry
• Peanut

I decided to do cherry.  I seriously wonder if and how anyone will do manhole cover.

The purpose of this project is idea generation, so drawing skill is not really very important.  It does come into play a little more in Part B however.

Yes, there is more to this project.  Part B is to choose our best solution from Part A and draw it 3 times the original size. (original is 1.25" x 1.5")  This is where the extra "1" gets added on the "100".   Obviously here, the purpose is now rendering our idea well.

She warned us not to use google for idea generation, since that is defeating the purpose of this project, and also, everyone will just have the same ideas anyway.  (although, when each person is going to have 100 ideas of one thing, I think there is going to be a lot of duplication anyway)

Illustration Project 3: 3-D Typography

14" x 11"

1.5" Border

Scratchboard

The 3rd project in Illustration was to take pictures of 3-D typography.  We were told to choose a theme for finding our type.  I decided to find typography associated with anywhere you can get pizza in Newark.  I found obvious places like Grottos, Peace-a-Pizza, etc... but also walked into unexpected or unsure-of places like Happy Harrys, The dollar store, Homegrown, to find even more letters.

Once we took pictures (we were required at least 10 letters of different fonts), we printed out the letters in many sizes, cut them out, and arranged them to make compositions. This was a long process.  Once we had the final composition, we translated that into a black/white drawing.  I decided scratchboard would be best for me because:

a) I wanted a black background

b) The scratchboard from my last

project was my lowest score, so I

wanted to take another stab at it.

My idea for this final composition was that The large T shape, was kind of magnetically holding all of the other forms, and some were falling from it or from the space around it.

Illustration Project 2: Celebrity Line Personality

15" x 15"

4 drawings of a famous person

Heath Ledger

Clockwise:

Scratchboard, Quill and Ink Cross Hatching,

Graphic Two-Tone (Gouache), Quill and Ink Line Drawing.

6" x 6"

Graphic Two Tone Board

Black Gouache

6" x 6"

Scratchboard

I got a 4 out of 5 on three of the boards, on this one, I got a 3 out of 5. She said the scratchboard needs more lights, but also the darks can be pure black.

I will try to find time to go back and fix details, adding darks and light to several boards.  I don't really know how I can go in and change the bottom two boards, so I will just focus on the top two.

My finest work yet!

In MacLab last week we were learning about Photoshop...bore.  They were teaching us the basics which everyone should know from Digital Media last year.  Anyway, they told us to take a background picture and add three new, unexpected elements to it.  So I have a jail cell, a baby (with a shadow I made), a My Little Pony, and a giraffe.  I'm so glad this class isn't graded, lol.

New Blog Feature: Labels

So I decided to add labels to all of my posts, which are conveniently totaled up on the right-hand side of the blog. If you want to look at all of my posts related to...drawing, you can click on that label for a list of all of the posts related to drawing. It also shows size variations between the labels to show which ones occur more often. (Photography is currently my most blogged about subject)

Now I'm starting to understand Illustrator...kind of

This is actually our second assignment in the Mac Lab. Our first was just an article layout. Not anything special. This project was fun. The task was to take a Logo, and use Adobe Illustrator to first draw it, and then manipulate it 9 times to show different emotions. The point of drawing it is because in illustrator, things are made out of vectors rather than pixels. This means you can create smooth curves and all kinds of shapes that you can change and resize and they will never get blurry because they aren't made of pixels. The emotions/traits we had to show were:

• Contentment
• Glee
• Agressiveness
• Timidity
• Submission
• Arrogance
• Grief
• Vulnerability
• And one or more of your choosing

My last one was just me playing around with different tools on illustrator, I came to that design, and thought it looked like distress. Voila