An Overview of This Semester

The ending of this class is a very bittersweet experience for me. Where to begin on describing this journey of a class and how much I have learned from it?

In this class, I learned a countless amount of information. Before taking Intro to Digital Arts, I had absolutely no idea what any of the softwares we worked with were, let alone how to use them. The only software we used that I had even heard of was Photoshop, and I was in for a very big surprise on how difficult it would be to master all of these programs. I would say that honestly, the software program I had the hardest time with was actually Photoshop. Perhaps this was due to the fact that almost all of our first assignments were on Photoshop, but I was so lost on where to even begin. However, I do feel that once I had finally learned enough about Photoshop and how to maneuver all the tools, I had a much easier time comprehending all of the other programs because they all had similar bases.

I would definitely say that in terms of the most difficult assignment, I experienced the most frustration with the Canvas and the Animation. I believe that the reason I experienced such difficulty with the canvas was because I legitimately had no understanding of what to do or how to work the program. I eventually was able to produce something that I did feel was well-done, but this was after quite a lot of stress and struggle. The animation was very stressful for me because honestly, more than anything I felt afraid of having to complete this project and was so unsure of where to even begin. However, I do feel that I also experienced successes in this class: I did a great job with the Autoscopy assignment and felt it was a great way to artistically express a personal issue very close to my heart. I also had a lot of fun with the Poster project, and I suppose these assignments are what I would consider to be my best work because they both gave me a chance to re-create myself in a different light, and choose to portray myself in any way I wanted.

Besides being academically challenging, this class was also immensely challenging to my own personal mental state and learning to balance. I do believe that this class has been the most difficult class I have ever taken in college, and I am now a senior. When I took this class, I took it because it was part of the requirements for my major. I had no idea what I was getting into, and there were countless times when I truly thought I couldn't do it anymore, or that I was going to fail the class. However, I am grateful that this class pushed me to my limits, because I was able to see my own strength and devotion to my education and future career, which was an exciting and awakening opportunity for me. I learned to balance, and I learned that I needed to better manage my stress and how upset and frustrated I would get with the smallest of things.

I of course must credit my professor, Santiago Echeverry, who also helped with this gain in personal insight and who never allowed me to stop challenging myself and exploring my limits. His humor and savvy got me through the class and his devotion to the topic was quite inspiring. He was always more than willing to help and always saw the most potential in every single one of his students. I also owe a lot of credit to my classmate Christianna Ing, whose everlasting patience and assistance in this class made my semester a joy. I couldn't have done it without her. Overall, I am glad I took this course, and truly do believe that I have gained a lot of knowledge that will help me in my personal life and in my career goals. Thank you Santi!













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Tutorial: Selecting our Favorite Posters

Before we did the poster assignment, we were told to explore some of the links on the art210 website in order to get some inspiration on what we wanted our posters to look like and to find good examples on previous poster work that has been done. While exploring, I really liked the World War II era posters because personally, that time in history completely fascinates me. I thought that these World War II posters did an amazing job of illustrating the concept of three that we discussed in class, by having words on the top, an image in the middle, and a call to action on the bottom to draw your eye and inspire you. However, my favorite by far were the Yusaku Kamekura posters. I thought this poster work was more abstract and I absolutely LOVED that. The colors were bright and bold, and the artistic abstract image in it immediately drew your eye and made you curious about what it was discussing. I found this to be very inspiring because in the career I hope to go into, advertising through posters is essential to draw someone's eye and make them want to know more. I really liked exploring these, and found it very enjoyable and eye-opening.

This was my favorite poster out of all of them:

Tutorial: Learning How to Use the Mesh Tool

For the mesh tool project, I realized that I was not very sure on how to use the mesh tool correctly and did not want to begin my project until I better understood what exactly I needed to do and how exactly to do it. Therefore, I googled "How to use the mesh tool in Illustrator" and clicked on the first video, which also happened to be the video we watched in class. This video was IMMENSELY helpful in my understanding of the mesh tool. I learned how to connect the segments and how to better use the eyedropper tool in order to get the precise color I needed. This tutorial helped me a lot. Below is a screenshot of that tutorial on YouTube:

Animation

Without a doubt, the animation project was my worst nightmare. I struggled with plenty of projects throughout the semester, but the animation was most definitely the hardest of these assignments (except maybe the canvas, which almost made me drop the class). Although we had a month to complete the project, I still struggled a lot time-wise because unlike most of my classmates, I tried to create an original animation from scratch without a video to animate on. I ended up choosing to do a video instead of the animation from scratch, which made me feel a lot more comfortable, especially once I had learned more about working with animation and how to place objects where I wanted them.

We were also assigned to create our own original soundtrack to go along with our animation, which was a whole other challenge because it was my first time working with Garage Band. However, I enjoyed this part of the animation project much more because I actually really enjoy music and love creating it, so for once I really felt at home with an assignment in this class. Creating the audio was definitely a lot of fun. Overall, I can say that this project helped me learn a lot more about Photoshop and about Garage Band, and I discovered a lot about the programs that I didn't even know you could do.

Below is the link to the animation with the audio on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/FZkaHI-LFgc

And a screenshot of what it looks like on YouTube!:

Poster

The poster assignment was a lot of fun to do, although I ended up changing the image later on in class. This was a lot of fun because I got to edit myself and play with the creative aspect of the image. I ended up also really liking the quote and transforming myself. I usually am a very happy go lucky girl, so creating a scarier image was so much fun to do. However, I did experience some challenges with the layers and correctly choosing filters that made the portrayal I actually wanted.

Original Image: 


Poster Image: 

Mesh Tool

For this assignment, we were told to use the mesh tool in Illustrator to create a mirrored image of an object that we had in our room. We were told to take a picture of the object and then upload it into Illustrator. We then used a combination of the pen tool, direct selection tool, and eyedropper tool to make an exact copy using Illustrator of the original object. I found this project to be pretty challenging.

Although it was definitely time consuming, what I had a really had a hard time with was actually getting the correct color where they needed to be and correctly understanding the dimensions. Since the object I chose had so many different dimensions, I had a really hard time getting all of them down and I also struggled really hard with all the different areas of shadow and light on my object.The silver of my object was very reflective and therefore used multiple colors ranging from white to bright silver and back to very very dark gray. After spending quite a few hours on this project, I was pretty frustrated but was able to finish it and was pleased enough with the final product.

Selfie with Original Object:




Original Object/Mesh Object:

Business Cards

I was very nervous about this project as soon as it was assigned because I felt that working entirely with Illustrator in order to create business cards was not going to work well for me at all. Although I do feel that Illustrator is a lot easier to use than Photoshop, I still struggled with it and did not feel confident before doing this project. However, I ended up really really having a great time doing this assignment. It was the first time ever that I had gotten to sketch out an idea and then actually watch it come to life. Since I do not really have any artistic skill when it comes to hands on painting, drawing, etc. I soon was able to recognize Illustrator as an extremely useful tool as opposed to my worst enemy. These business cards actually ended up being a lot of fun to work on, although they were pretty time consuming.