Assignment #7 - Logos

The next assignment we had to complete using Adobe Illustrator was designing and creating a series of logos. Graphis design is not something that I've delved much into, but I had a lot of fun designing several ideas in my sketchbook for logos, and I'm just a bit disappointed that I had to drop some of them (not that I would've had the time to finish 5 of these... so I can't complain too much!) The three logos you see here include a ring shop, an aquatic emporium, and perhaps my favorite, a golf-themed sports bar.

Perhaps the biggest new tool I put to use with these logos was the Live Paint feature, which allows you to add color to areas in-between closed strokes. Each of the three logos made heavy use of it. Other cool tools I got to use this time that weren't as useful during the calligram assignment included the effect gallery and the different brush patterns. I also had to do a bit of outside research for certain parts of these logos, such as the grassy effect on the Green Tee logo or the lowered Line Paint opacity on the Pristine logo, but I think it helped to make the final products even better!

Assignment #6 - Calligram

Moving on to learning Adobe Illustrator, the assignment this time around was to create a calligram, also known as a picture comprised of words that relate to the picture. I had a few different ideas for how to start this, such as a tree or an umbrella, but ultimately I decided to go with this raven you see here. The words that decorate it are... well, they're not the most imaginative, I guess we can put it that way, but after finding out that the words had to be our own writing and I couldn't pick out lines from The Raven, I needed to come up with something fast. Besides, I think it's pretty cool seeing words like quill and plume actually shaped like that...

I used a lot of different warp techniques in order to achieve this look. Off the top of my head... most of the plumes were made by warping to a pre-drawn selection, the feathers on the top of the wings were made by adjusting meshes, the legs and talons were made with arced warp effects, and the quills were hand-morphed on the vector level using anchor points. I think it was pretty cool that I got to utilize most of the different methods of warping text in this one image. I had a lot of fun matching the gradient shading to the original picture too; I thought it worked fine without, but it adds an extra level of depth you wouldn't otherwise get. I'm liking Illustrator so far and am looking forward to working with it more on future assignments!

Assignment #5 - Rotoscope

...is it done? Is it actually done? Oh... oh my goodness, it's really finished!

After spending upwards of a month on this ambitious rotoscoping project, I don't have as much energy in me to write an impressively long blog post, so I'll keep this relatively brief; I would ultimately challenge the notion that this is my favorite project of the semester, but I would be lying if I said that the catharsis I experienced upon finishing was nothing short of divine. I attribute my frustrations with this project primarily due to the tedium of animating the rotoscope on two different passes, which has taken a severe toll on my shoulder and wrist. O course, this is also the project that introduces me to the wonderful drawing tablet that is so much easier to use than a trackpad and makes me want to draw more for fun...

On the positive side, however, I did enjoy the more traditional process of working up a background for the animation, and the video editing process in iMovie was gratifying if only because of how short it was. As for making music in GarageBand... well, I've said in class that I'm no musician, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly interested in learning how to compose more. While I did find GarageBand's loop system a bit limiting in terms of my scope and vision for the soundtrack, I am relatively proud of the track I was able to make given said constraints.

Considering that this used to be the final project but was moved up from its usual position, I'm hoping that the remaining projects will be a bit less intensive than this one, but perhaps none of them will be as satisfying to witness in completion than this one...?