Graphic Design & Printmaking 3-4

The mid level graphic design class seemed like it helped me refine my skills as a graphic designer, giving me more opportunities to fine tune my craft and interact with other people along the way as well. I used a lot of peer advice to get things done when I didn't know what to do, and I appreciate all their help.

TWO COLOR STENCIL: OPEN THEME

Mine was related to sports here at Millikan, namely the volleyball team. I suppose I did it for the mens team since the figure I used was male. The lettering was the easiest since it was mostly straight lines, though I saw many people struggling with more detailed designs. I might go a little more detailed if I were to do the project again, but probably not much. I'd make sure that x-acto knife was sharp as that seemed to make the most difference. I had the most trouble cutting when the blade was dull.

DESIGNER-CLIENT PROJECT: HALL PASSES

I did mine for myself, since I was out of the red passes I normally use. I used multiple different colors of paper when they were printed because I get bored of seeing the same thing over and over when I'm writing out passes to people. It only took one revision since I did my own, though I know plenty of classmates that had to go back three or more times to fix things that were wrong (prefixes like Ms. or Mrs. or room numbers for example). I did have to reprint a few times to get the opacity of the ram light enough that I could see what I was writing on the paper once the pads were made.

Now that we're not able to do hall passes any more the classes had to do note pads this year. A bit more limited but they still got the assignment done.

TRADING CARDS

We needed to create our own original character, be it a hero, villain, or monster. After drawing it on regular paper we had to transfer it to the computer, then use the pen tool to trace over it and then color it in. We added a background and a border, as well as characteristics and statistics on the back. I modeled mine after Calvin (from the old comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) and a little on Garfield's eyes, but the rest is completely original. The name I took from an old friend of mine.

DIGITAL SELF-PORTRAIT

This one was a lot trickier than I thought it would be. The layer masks were tough on the text one because I didn't really know what I was doing at first. I feel like I know it a little better now, but the cartoon one seemed to come out better in my opinion. We had three options for this project: use text to create a portrait, use polygons, or turning ourself into a cartoon. Here are examples of each type of style.

Cartoon

Text

Low Poly

ANIMATION OF CHOICE: .GIF

This connected to one of my favorite sports, volleyball. The class had to create a small bit of simple animation using Photoshop and looking back at it now the ball kind of looks like it's curving instead of being hit straight down. So I'd probably change that if I had to do the project again. Many students just did still frames from videos on Youtube and that was alright but I'm glad mine was a bit more original. We saved it using the Graphics Interchange Format (.gif).

PERSPECTIVE CITY

We did our cities using two-point perspective, and had to include at least ten buildings or structures. Once I got the perspective grid figured out the rest became much easier. You just have to select the part of the cube you want to create shapes for it and it becomes far simpler than trying to draw it manually, rather than just hoping it's in accurate two point perspective. Most of the buildings I created had some sort of meaning for me. Parkcrest is the name of the church I attend, I love coffee and I work at Millikan. The truck was just easier than trying to do a car (though I wanted to do one...just never got it looking quite right). The house is a little tribute to Pixar and Disney related to the movie Up. The background really made the picture look realistic for me, as well as a little bit of shading between sides on the buildings.

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