First-ies of Junior Year

Typography
Project 1: Display Face
For our first typography project, I had to revisit my typeface I designed last semester and revise it to make it better, and then transfer it into Typetool, which makes the typeface an actual font you can type with. I revised my typeface a lot. I can't believe some of the things I didnt do when designing it the first time around, it is now ten times better. I was also lucky I had designed a typeface based off the square because it made transferring it into Typetool a lot easier. My side bearings for all the letters were the same, which saved me hours of work.

This is my work document in Illustrator. It has all the variations of letters I did, as well as the letters put together to form words to make sure they work together well.

And this is my final typeface, including numbers and 12 additional characters. It is named Valor because originally the face was based on my self-defense class, which is why the design is so bold, and sturdy. Valor is the characteristic of being able to face danger without fear, which is what my self-defense class (and this typeface) is all about.
...and maybe a little about darth vader.


Studio
Project 1: Experience of Search
I was assigned to a group, and we were assigned the experience of searching. We then had to individually choose an experience we had with searching for something and design something to reflect that experience. For weeks I had been hearing about health care reform, and wanted to have an opinion on it because it seemed very important, but was just uninformed. So I chose the search for an opinion on health care reform. And I went through that process, researching and documenting everything. In the end, I came up with this concept map to show my experience.
I would post the PDF so you could read it, but blogspot doesnt read PDFs. It has a lot of good information on it though. My main focus was separating facts from myths. Hopefully reform will start to happen soon!


Imaging
Project 1:
We are currently learning Flash, so I don't really have anything to post for Imaging right now.

Jelly!

So I finished painting Jelly, but I can't decide if I want to outline him in pen a la Audrey Kawasaki, or not. I like him without, but the pen may bring out some of the small details like in his middle tentacles. I really can't decide and I'm too scared to try it out, because it can't really be undone! Opinions anyone?

Also, the colors are a little bright due to the light from the scanner, its a little darker/saturated in RL. The wash is painted with gouache, and the jelly is painted with acrylic.


Here's the little color/paint/ink test I did on the back of one of the side blocks, just testing things/messing around.

Jellyfish Mania!

Finally getting around to posting some of these jellyfish! This is one I've been working on this week. The drawing is pretty much done, so i'll probably paint it tomorrow. It's three separate pieces of wood I snagged from the shop at the end of last semester. When its done they would be viewed with about 1/2 inch between each piece. I wanted to take a picture of it while its just in pencil, just in case the painting doesn't turn out as planned. And because my camera broke—and I'm broke too—I had to scan it in (if only martha could see my correct use of em dashes!).

Vector Mei

Vector Mei that I made in Illustrator from the drawing I posted before.


I also painted a casting of my friends breasts (a thing they do for breast cancer awareness) for her, but I didn't have a camera to take a picture of it, but hopefully she will send me a photograph so i can post it! And I still have to paint mine too...

Summer: __________

Finally I found some time to post a few things from summer so far...

Wiibounce was an interesting experience that really opened my eyes. It's kind of hard to explain, but I read a quote that relates:

"So, here I sit - the equivalent of a graphic design short order cook just waiting for someone who might appreciate a true gourmet."

That's basically what I felt when doing designs for Wiibounce. I was just doing quick turn arounds for a client who really could care less about how good the design was. Which is fine, I'm not bashing that side of design, I realize there are clients that just want something done to get the information out there and don't have a huge budget to hire a design studio. But that's not what I want to do with my career. I don't want to be churning out frequent buyer cards, and gift cards (which don't interest me at all). I want to be creating interesting, thought-provoking stuff and that requires interesting clients that actually care about the design. I just hope when I graduate I can get a job at a great design studio, because it seems that is the key.

This summer has also been the summer of Studio Ghibli I've watched just almost every Studio Ghibli film now. I think my favorites are: Spirited Away, Whispers of the Heart, Pom Poko, and My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicca, and Laputa. I do not like: Grave of the Fireflies, Ocean Waves, or Porco Russo. I hope Ponyo is good. Its got the cute character down.
This is a little drawing of Totoro and Mei. Totoro turned out a bit skinny and leaning to one side and the two are standing on different levels, but oh well. I'm going to create the girl into a vector image and try and make it an amazing color vector to try and get better at vector-ing.


Audrey Kawasaki is my favorite artist and about once every few months she sells prints of her new paintings for around $300. I would love to own one, but definitely do not have that much money to spare. And all the ones recently have been very small (8.5/11) and dont seem to be worth the money. So... I decided to create my own. So I picked one of my favorites and traced it on a window (I knew I would never be able to draw it as good as her, and I wanted it to be as close to the real thing as possible, so it was a guilt-less trace. Normally tracing is like quitting to me). So then I painted it with gouche and I the original Kawasaki is painted transparently on wood, but I didnt have wood large enough so I used water color paper, and painted it opaque with bright colors instead of transparent just to see what it would look like. Plus I knew I could never replicate her painting skills so why not do my own?

Of course its no Kawasaki original, but it will do as a Kawasaki tribute on my wall. She is so talented. I really love all her stuff.