#10 Magazine

For this assignment, I decided to create a magazine cover that revolved around festivals because I had a couple good photos from festivals and thought I could write a lot about it. I settled on the name "Mainstage" because every festival I have been to so far has had a main stage, a place where everything revolved around. I chose to feature other kind of festivals, such as Burning Man and Renaisance festivals to show that its an all inclusive magazine. And lastly, I settled on the ad in the back because I had a big collection of Ray Bans, a staple of festival eyewear. I think it turned out pretty well, and I could even see it being on a magazine stand somewhere. I will not, however, be rushing to use inDesign again. It was too different from everything else and too restrictive.

#9 Beer Label

This was my original decision for this project. I thought it captured the essence of art nouveau and I could make it into three different varieties. Looking back on my sketches, however, made me decide to change gears and go for this one. 

I chose this one because I could think of a lot of good description that would make it sound appealing. I also though there could be the opportunity for some interesting illustrator work, as by this point, I have gotten used to it. I threw in some interesting gradients and kept everything as clean and professional looking as possible. The description is full of references to a game called Pokemon. Ninetails is a fire Pokemon, which inspired the color scheme. 

#8 Rotoscope

When we were asked to go gather footage for this assignment, I immediately thought hooping would be an interesting motion to animate. We spent about 10 minutes in an alley behind my house getting different shots of her hooping. I liked the standing, spinning motion and gathered a few seconds of it for the animation. I tried a few different techniques, but then I saw this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9slkeFXogU

I was inspired by the grittiness of the animation and decided to go for the same kind of feel. I used some bright neon colors and decided to make her fade away towards the end with the intention of having the hoop float on its own for a second, but I ran out of frames and time. I chose a photograph of the Carina Nebula from NASA to use as the background and added a track from a free public domain track called Wizard by Tchami. This was the result.

#7 Multiplicity

I was at the Hillsborough County Courthouse to get my passport renewed and I noticed a neat little garden area that I thought would make an interesting scene for a film. When we got this assignment, I thought of it again, called my friend Jayne, and went back for a photoshoot. I thought the end result was fantastic. Not only did I learn how easy it was to do this kind of thing and do it convincingly, but its introduced me to other uses for the mask that I will use in photoshop in the future. I thought the composition came out really well, as there's a strong inward dynamic all the way to the back palm tree.

#6 Photo Restoration

When given this assignment, I immediately texted my grandma (yes, she's hip) because I thought for sure she'd have something that had significant damage to the subject. Unfortunately, she only had a few older photos that she was willing to part with, including a picture of her aunt which she invited me to destroy.

I found this project to be kind of excitingly easy. Doing this got me interested in bettering my skills and possibly utilizing it somehow. I was always a fan of puzzles, and I found this to be rather like that. Though this one isn't perfect, I think I did a rather good job considering the amound of damage I had to work through.

#5 Propaganda Poster

For me, this project started with a couple doodles of mushrooms that I had made as a warm up for my sketches. I chose one in particular and developed it into an anti-drug propaganda about psychedelic mushrooms. I wanted to make it militaristic and exaggerated, as if the mushrooms were some malevolent force like some of the US propaganda about Nazis.

I began putting everything together in Illustrator, beginning with a radiating spiral, of which I based the color scheme on. The mushrooms were fun to work on because I decided to use some of the more psychedelic looking patterns on Illustrator to vary the mushroom tops. I also clipped out some nazi bodies and added a half-tone effect to create some goose stepping mushrooms. This is the result...

Project #3 Logos

This project was actually quite a bit more fun and interesting from the last one, if only because I'm interested in the practical uses of graphic arts and this sort of thing couldn't be more practical. I've actually been approached before about creating logos for a company and its great that I get to now learn the tools to do so and put it into application.

This project (like many creative assignments) started as a brainstorm. On a rainy day, I sat in my roommate's room for a few hours and just rambled off possible companies. We ended up getting quite a few ideas and I began putting them to paper. The result was a medley of random logos.

I then began to work on three ideas. The Taco Tuesday's, Bean mattresses, and Xavier's salon went on to this next level because I thought they'd allow for the most Illustrator possibilities. I started with the Xavier's Salon:

The main element of this one that I wanted to express was the clean and elegant nature of the salon. In addition I wanted to utilize the use of the scissors as a letter. I experimented with several different color choices and font types.

Taco Tuesdays was the one that I wanted to experiment with 3d rendering. I started with a flat image and made it 3d, from there, I knew what I had to do to clean it up and make it look nice.

This one originally started out as "Bed" because I thought the word bed looked like a bed and could make it interesting and multi-meaning. I used some vector manipulation and brush kits to achieve this look. The colors, however, continued to be a problem for me. I'm unable to find exactly the right combination of colors.

Here is the final result:

As you can see, I cleaned up and finalized the logos, resulting in what I thought was a set of pretty successful pieces. The Taco Tuesdays was able to finally become as bold and playful as I was hoping. I finally decided on a good color scheme for Bean and cleaned up the figure. And Xavier's salon took on a whole new, much cleaner look. Overall, I'm pretty proud of my work. I could definitely see these on an advertisement or a billboard. However, during our class critique, I began to feel a little less confident simply because everyone else's logos were far more elaborate. As a commercial designer, I understand that less is more and that's what I went for with these three designs. I do recognize though, that I could have come up with more complex ideas to really show what I know. Looks like this was yet another learning experience.

Calligram Project

Wow. This was an insanely trying and ultimately unsuccessful project. Overall, my failure was a matter of ambition and mistake. First, allow me to tell you the story of its creation.

When we first received the assignment, my mind began working on trying to find an original idea. This lead to the following sketches.

The peace sign, the dove, and the olive branch represent peace and happiness. A closer look reveals the picture to be made up of derogatory words and phrases.  

The cherry blossoms and the pagoda are symbols of Japan, to be made up of the names of those killed in the bombings of Nagasaki.

The KFC Colonel's head on a chicken pot pie. KFC's chicken pot pie has the longest ingredient list of all known food products. The picture would be made up of these ingredients.

By the demands of my professor, I eliminated the middle concept. Because I wanted this piece to reflect myself in some way, I decided to go with the first option.

There is a memorial in Nagasaki Japan that lists all known victims of the bombings during WWII. I initially intended to find these names but due to the high cost of travel, I decided to go another route. 

I called my mother who has kept some of my grandmother's things and she told me that she had a small book from my grandmother's last trip to Japan. This book included memorials and testimonials for the victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. I asked her to send it to me.

And so begins the most unnecessary and time consuming tangent...

When I recieved the book, I found that the names were listed first by city and then alphabetically. Within the groups, the names were accompanied by their ages. I then decided to make the individual flowers clusters of names with the age being the center. Hand-sorting these names became a VERY difficult and VERY trying process. So tedious that I had to abandon my initial intention of honoring all victims, and decided to just cover one city, Soma City. 

I originally intended for the trunk of the tree to be made of lines, but I came upon a poem in the book that I felt needed to be included. The letter, "On the White Ashes" is a traditional reading at Japanese mainland Buddhist funerals. This was read at my grandfather's funeral and I imagine was read at the services of these deceased individuals. Its significance is so strong for me and for Japanese Buddhists that I felt it needed to be included.

Overall, I'm not very proud of my work. It wasn't the idea that I originally wanted to do and I lost sight of various crucial points to the assignment because I was so confident in my idea. It was a very time consuming project and I but way too much effort into this. But, as with any project, it was a process by which I learned.

Project #1 HTML

I actually had quite a bit of fun with this project. I've had very basic training in HTML before but its been so long, I'd forgotten how much I enjoy this kind of thing. Of course, I can understand why many people wouldn't like HTML but I have a knack for codes and puzzles which, to me, is very much what this is all about. It took me a while to refresh my memory as to how it works but once I figured it out, I got comfortable quickly and began experimenting.

As you can see by the progress picture above, I immediately gravitated toward a very organized and mostly symmetrical canvas. I have a very obsessive compulsive personality and once I understood what the code was doing and how to manipulate it, I placed my shapes in a way that would be visually and mathematically clean.  

However, as you can see by the final product, I eventually went away from being neat and organized and started placing things so that I could meet all the requirements and not be too crowded. However, as the tutorials got more difficult and the puzzles got harder, I abandoned my need for symmetry and let things fall into place, such as the two hearts that aren't EXACTLY aligned. 

Overall, I think this project was very helpful in learning about how the programs we'll be using work. Furthermore, I think it helped me to think about how difficult and strenuous it is to be so determined to be symmetrical. Not all art is mathematically sound and I would like to challenge myself to experiment more with randomness.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my 2014 Beginning Digital Arts Blog for the fall semester. I'm actually pretty excited for this class. I've been told that this class can be quite a bit of work, but after learning about the specific kinds of projects we'll be doing, I'm not so worried. In fact, I'm excited to start some of them, such as the rotoscope and animation. I also really enjoyed the work we did with HTML. I had taken a class once before on the subject, but its been so long ago, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed this type of programming. Overall, I think this is going to be a pretty good semester. I enjoy the content, I feel like I'll get along well with the rest of the class, and I'm looking forward to see what kind of art I can create.
My name is Alix Honda and I am a junior here at the University of Tampa. I'm currently majoring in Film and Media arts with a minor in Digital Arts. I am originally from St. Paul, Minnesota and just recently moved to Tampa in 2012. I enjoy anything creative, social, or adventurous which includes (but is not limited to) filmmaking, listening to and creating music, camping, and long boarding. I would say my passion in life is creating art, but specifically, the art of story telling. I hope to eventually become a director/producer/writer, but am not dabbling in everything I can on the way.
I'm not entirely sure what to expect from this class, but on a surface level, I hope to learn more about different forms of digital art. Specifically, I'm hoping to learn more in depth about the different programs and tools out there to enhance my abilities to create new pieces. Though my first love will always be filmmaking, I think that this class can add to my abilities as a graphic artist, which I hope will help me to be a better and more technologically advanced filmmaker. Seeing as I already know a great deal (but by no means not all) about some aspects of this class (eg HTML and Adobe products), I hope to ultimately expand my knowledge and create new work to add to my portfolio.