#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...