Thursday, 27 September 2012

Alphabet Letter Making

In this given task, we were told to look at any objects around us that give us the resemblance of the alphabet. These had to be taken by pictures and then we form a grid or a pattern and then place all the letters and the should all look like the alphabet and can easily be spotted by someone. 
With that in hand, this was my final idea of all the objects that i managed to take.


REFERENCE FOR LETTERS

A - Bench
B - Stand alone desk
C - Old casket handle
D - Door handle with shadow
E - Art drawing stand
F - Shelf design
G - Fire hose
H - Seats at eating place
I - Vending machine coin slot
J - Umbrella handle
K - Gate of a fence
L - Markings on a sports court
M - McDonalds paperbag
N - Roofing under design
O - Speaker 
P - Lighting box
Q - Satellite dish
R - Button
S - Neon lighting
T - Trench
U - Piecering ring
V - Trees
W - Design on the ground
X - Gate design
Y - Road signs
Z - Old spanner

Monday, 24 September 2012

Copying And Referencing

In the given task, we were told to make a research on the following words and how the differ from one another. These words being 'copying' and 'referencing'. A description or understanding about both needed to be done and for thus, my comparisons between the two were as follows.

Copying - By my understanding, copying is more of a skill or technique that is used to 'copy' ones original information or artifact and then make it their work without knowing or going through the process of the original work. Copying itself is not 100% accurate because depending on what someone might be copying e.g, a drawing, the two copies, original and copy might not be exactly the same because the copy might have less accuracy due to not having a clear understanding of how the original drawing was made. When it comes to the modern digital style of copying, it is much easier and possible to get a 100% because one can easily just copy/cut and paste the exact same information normally off the internet and make no changes to it. So copying could be just a process of regenerating original material.

Referencing - By the word itself, i already understand that this method is a type where as the person getting the information has to refer to where the got the original information that they copied. So simply referencing is more of acknowledging the sources of ideas that you have got and applied to your own work. More like appreciating the original work and showing their credit in your own work. Mostly referencing can be made/seen in drawings, illustrations, information gained from interviews e.t.c.

So with the two being understood, we can clearly say that copying does not show any originality in your work, it is more of a replica of ones work or idea and showing that you are using it as your work whereas referencing is a more better style of working because its a sign that you used someones ideas, information and then created something of your own but still credited the original piece of work and showed appreciated by referencing where that piece of information was taken from. 

Sunday, 16 September 2012

Drawing Skills

In this task, we were told to explore types of drawing that we were taught. These drawings were :

  • Speed Drawing - Drawing an object within a given time e.g 30seconds.
  • Contour Drawing - Drawing an object that gives an outline of it without lifting the pen/pencil/marker up and just using one line over and over to make up the drawing.
  • Blind Drawing - Drawing an object without looking at the piece of media. E.g, paper. So you are more of drawing an object blindly whilst staring at it and not looking at the paper.
With those types of drawing understanding, we were told to incorporate that with our task. The tasks for each drawing are explained below :

  • Speed Drawing - In this one, we were told to draw an object within a specific time and those times were a 30second drawing and a 60 second drawing. This drawing had to be recorded to show proof that it was actually drawn in 30 and 60 seconds. Below is the drawing of both 30 and 60 seconds.
  • Contour Drawing - Here we are told to use any pieces of material that will give it a contour drawing feeling. Hence materials like threads, Wires, Shoelaces, Toothpaste, Paper could be used to come up with the 'drawing'. For my drawing, i chose a human face that i designed wires to come up with it. So after using the wires, i used more recycled materials like shoelaces and pink paper i found laying around. The pink paper gave me an idea to use it as the color of the lips and then the shoelaces i used were cut to that i could give it some eyebrows, a beard and some hair. Just to add more 'life' to the contour drawing.
  • Blind Drawing - We were asked to use any piece of recycled material like papers, newspapers, clothes, and just any piece of media that we could draw on as well use different drawing objects like paint, pencil, markers and maybe coal. After choosing the drawing object (pen or pencil) we draw on the material without looking down and just focusing on the object.

Thursday, 6 September 2012

Creating A Texture

In this task, we were told to make any piece of art or design that was by the use of natural objects and to refer to how this materials can be used or where the are found. Due to it being natural, we had to use things like sand, flowers, grass, etc.

So for my design, i chose to use sand. I was going to use this sand to come out with a word which was 'desert' why i chose this was because sand is also found in the desert and is also a natural man made artifact so hence i chose that. 
To apply this design, i used glue and piece of paper that i simply wrote down the word desert with the glue and then i applied the sand on top of the glue so that the particles can easily fall/stick onto the paper. There after i added some leaves that i found to add more ''design' to my work, because you rarely find vegetation in the desert, i designed to make vegetation thats found in the desert and that was a cactus. So i simply applied glue and then made the shape of a cactus with the leaves i found. I also added the bush feel to it by finding little dry grass to represent more of the desert feel.



With that being the design i had come out with. I would have come up with a more refined design to show more and maybe have an invert of the sand by having the desert word be left out and the whole place be filled with sand but due to the soggy sand that i found, that was quite for me to complete as well as have having different shades of sand like a desert hence this design for me was one that would show the idea of what was really out there.



Tuesday, 4 September 2012

Typeface That Describes Me

In this task, we are asked to choose fonts that we feel describe us by the way the look and are designed. The font also has to show some characteristics of us personally and we have to explain how the fonts speak to us.

With that taken note, my choice of fonts are as follows :


  • Birth Of A Hero


The font above i feel describes me because it has that cool artistic retro look and me being a guy that is personally cool with anything this font describes me. And the way that it has little pieces off the letters to give it that superhero and futuristic look with a touch of graffiti sense also relate to me because I am one that easily caught with a good sense of graffiti sense and something that catches my eye.

  • El&font gothic

This font definately catches me and describes the artistic side of me. Its a mixture of gothic and graffiti. This font gives the graffiti art inspired i have and one that can easily speak to me because it is like a scribbled down font and since i like to scribble down words and drawings, this font describes that part of me that i can easily come up with an artistic designed word or image.

  • Eccentric Std
First look at this font one can easily see that it has that tall feature and also gives that strong figure that has height and this is one font that i like to use. One reason being that i am kind of a tall person so this gives me that feeling of being broad and tall and also it brings out that ancient type of lettering which speaks to me in a way that i have been through alot in past years and that i still stand tall on my feet. 

  • Throwupz
This font gives me the feel of my music side. I have a passion for music and with this font, it has that artistic feel of hip hop that are normally written on walls and not only does it give the musical feel about me but also the graffiti side i have. So this font is collaborated with the musical and graffiti feel i have a passion feel.













Sunday, 29 July 2012

Revolution Or Evolution?

In this task, we were told to look at advertising and find an advert that appeals to us in such a way that it may be empty or can need improvement and also looking at the brand history to know the target group so ideas can be easy to work with.

With that in line, my brand that i was to work with was a sports brand called Nike.  

I did some research on the brand and found out that the Nike is one of the biggest sporting brands in the United States. The brand deals in clothing, shoes, boots,, accessories and sports equipment as well.

The above image was with one nikes big mogul, Cristiano Ronaldo standing with chest up infront of a simple back ground and the nike tick top right and website at the bottom.
  • To me, this advert was too simple and plain because it never gave that big feeling of nike. Nike being a big brand and Ronaldo being a big mogul, that meant that something big or attracting would need to be done and hence i chose this image and edited it to add more detail. So i edited it and added more detail in the image below :


From the image above, can see that it looks very different and not plain anymore. Color was added to give it that dark feeling that fades into black, nike logo was taken and placed on the chest and the motto 'just do it' was placed just underneath the shirt and also as a background text to show the imprint of the image. And because everything about nike was there and nothing about Ronaldo was there, i added a "cr7" at the bottom left corner with the same text color as the main text in the photo.




NIKE SHOES







Next was of a shoe type that is under Nike, this shoe is called "Dunk" and is incorporated with basketballers and just the whole concept of dunking. To me this advert was already more easy to work with but one who wouldnt know what type of shoe type this be would wonder where the 'dunk' concept is. And thats the idea that i wanted to add on.






The above image shows a more 'detailed' and more richer advert than the other. This one has a basket baller that is dunking and having that air feeling at the end of the shoes. To make it look more fine and more elegance i inverted the image to give it that cutting edge look, added a little blur and and smudged the baller in the direction of the movement. Then added another baller on the shoe which actually looks like the design of the shoe so this can give more attention to shop buyers that this is one of a kind sneaker. When looked closely can see a Miami Heat baller about to make a dunk. I then copied the same image and then flipped it horizontally and received it and added a layer mask then erased some parts necessary. This was just to add more deatil and also make it look attractive. "Dunks" Text was added at the bottom of the original text and had a gradient of colors picked out from the same image. Gave it more feeling and cutting edge. A faded rim was added at the bottom of the sneaker to add more emphasis on the 'dunk' effect.


With the changes made to these sample adverts, we can see that any advert that is paid attention to and analyzed properly can be made better. In other words, revolution overcame created ideas.

Analyzing Various Fonts Available

In this task, we were told to look at organic matter and inorganic matter and also the color textures that we would find in an image of choice.


So to begin with i had to find out what was the meaning of organic matter and non matter and research on the internet lead me to these explanations.
  • Organic matter - is matter that has come from a once-living organism; is capable of decay and one that has life in it. 
  • Non organic matter - Anything that does not contain any carbon like water. And one that would also not cause decay. One that doesnt have any life.
With the that taken note off, i looked for examples of each and from these examples, i would pick one that i would work with and analyze its texture. 
Some of the examples that i found for organic matter were those of living organisms that would decay later on. Such examples were :
  • Trees
  • Oranges
  • Grass
  • Feathers
Then with non organic matter these are the materials that i found :
  • Sunglasses
  • Chain
  • Bottle
  • Bracelet
These examples arose because the didnt not have any life or have any life that would cause any decay or die.

From the examples that i came up with, i had to pick one that i was going to work with either organic or non organic and examine the texture of the image. I was going to do this by scanning the matter and see what ways i can see the texture.
For this, i used a scanner and then i rolled the orange around so that i could get the peel effect of the orange and see the little 'pores' that the orange has, because the color of it could not really show the texture of the orange, i moved the scanned image into photoshop where i desaturated the image from color into a black and white balance and then changed the image to threshold to highlight the shadows and all. These shadows where going to show the little detail that the orange has around it.




RAW SCAN IMAGE


BLACK AND WHITE EFFECT


THRESHOLD ADDED TO REVEAL TEXTURE




After scanning, i got the texture i wanted and i had a better sight of the detail that i wanted to obtain and think of a design where this type of texture could be applied and to me this looked like a type of texture that could be used on materials that need grip. So i put together the texture from the orange with a small texture of a sample picture of grip and to show that there is a little similarity where the this texture is used.






Above is a the texture off the scanned orange and the actual texture of a grip that is used for side paneling. 


Next, we were told to analyze the the different color shades that are found in an image. Told to notice color shades and how much they are in the image. Color shades to be noticed were 

  • CMYK
  • RGB
  • Patone pattern
So to analyze these, used the soft ware called Adobe illustrator where we were taught how to use and also get the same shades of color. This is the image to be worked on due to the different color variations it has :


After having the image in place had to place the image on a paper where can put the different colors on the side. After that was done, made little boxes by the side where the information and diiferent colors were to be shown. After the box was there, we took the eye dropper tool that collects color from an image, so clicking the box and the using the eye dropper we could easily select any color that we wanted to be in the box.


The image above shows the different colors that i managed to get from the image. These colors were placed on the right where the levels will be shown, the reason for having 3 of each was to have each box with its specific content, that being CMYK, RGB and the Patone level.
To obtain the color shades of each color, we clicked on the color box and then 
Edit -> Edit Colors -> Recolor Artwork and select Color Books where you will have a list of color books and from there we select PANTONE Pastone Coated. Once selected the color box will show the Pantone levels in that color.


The image below shows the Pantone levels that are present in that specific color.

There after we select on the same color box and we can get the different shades thus being RGB and CMYK by selecting which one. So we click on one color box and then select the color shade of choice, in this case we shall select CMYK.

The image above the CMYK color values that the color has and its put in percentages so levels are jotted down so that when labelling, can be easier to know the levels than using this method all the time.

Then to obtain the RGB colors, we simply change the selection from CMYK to RGB after selecting the third box.



The RGB levels are shown above and are placed in values easily seen.

So after obtaining all levels : CMYK, Pantone, RGB in one specific color, the same method is to be applied to the other colors obtained and once that is done, can easily label the color boxes with their specific color shades so that it is easily seen. The image below shows the levels of all the colors obtained.