Headache in a Box

I was trying to make something with radio waves. That's all. Just a common screen name I use and 2011. Nothing fancy. Of course, I fought with this program for three hours (not counting render time) to make something as simple as this was. The prepping of the words wasn't too difficult, and creating the solids was easy, but then, when I used the settings that were on the assignment description? Things broke. Words disappeared, radio waves refused to form, rendering failed miserably, and frustration ensued. I ended up starting over. Of course, when I started over things magically worked and I had no idea what I was doing differently. By that time, however, I was running out of time to render anything fancy. I threw this together, slapped some royalty free classical music on it in Premier Pro, and was finally done. I have decided that After Effects is annoying. Especially since I don't have it at home to play with and get familiar with.

RAAAAWR!!!

I wanted to do something all fantasy-like because that's just what I do. So I found this model in the lightwave content. They said this was an orc or a troll or something ridiculous like that. It reminded me more of a lizard man in an old rpg video game I used to play. Using the 3-d coat program, I painted it with a lizard-like skin and gave it a sort of warpaint and splattered a blood-looking brush on his teeth. I liked this assignment, and only wish I had a more awesome-looking and intricate model. Like a dragon. I haven't done a dragon yet in this class. There must be something wrong with me this quarter. I feel like I need to fix this now. I digress. The only thing I don't like too much about this model is the eye. It doesn't look realistic enough. While I know how to fix this in lightwave, I hadn't a clue how to do so in 3-D coat. So sucky it stayed.

Sticker!

When I started the projects, I admittedly had no clue what I was going to do. Eventually, I decided on turning my screen nic-name into a sticker and put... erm... Blood on it? With spider webs? I guess. It was all done in Illustrator with simple tools; the blob brush, shape, and text tools. I'm not all that good at thinking up of simple designs that would make easy to use stickers or logos... So I'm just okay with what I did, considering how little I knew what was going to happen in the beginning.

In this assignment we were supposed to create simple, easy to read and understand flash cards that would aid in communication. I used Photoshop for the images which I traced using my tablet. The rest was done in InDesign. I think I accomplished the objective for at least all but the "Thank You" card. Thank you is a difficult phrase to simply put into a singe image and understand it. The thank you I used could also be mistaken for hello or goodbye or nice to meet you. I thought about doing a person bowing, or a single hand waving, or a 'thumbs up' hand signal, but none of those struck me as thank you like someone shaking hands. Some may feel differently about the topic, but oh well. At least the rest of the cards were pretty easy to figure out

Ghost fish and... erm... the other one

For these two works, I was merely trying to accomplish the objective; get the four brushes done and use them somehow. Honestly, these were sort of a last minute thing. The weird border on the picture of my dog were supposed to be... clouds? Uh... and the floaty things in the center? Dandelion seeds I guess... I had a better direction and took a lot more time with the fish picture. I made what was obviously a set of bubbles and sea grass. The fish was traced from a picture with my tablet on the interwebs. I like the ghost look I gave it. Everything else was also made using my tablet as well. Overall, I hate the picture of my dog and I'm okay with the picture of the fish, and that's about it. Not my best work.

A Red Bird of Yellow-Eyed Demise

Here, I was trying to accomplish a new look for the Slam magazine that was eye-popping, but also pertained to both the school and the magazine itself. The long-necked bird was inspired by the Raider's mascot, but I tried to make it look a little more scholarly. Like he was reading a book or something and gasping at it's incredible literary power. That's sorta self-gratifying, since those words in the background are from a novel I'm writing but can never put it in the magazine because of how huge it is. I used photoshop for this and drew the bird with my tablet at home. Then it was a simple task of using layers well and copy-pasting words. Overall, it was about a two to three hour endeavor. I'm happier than I thought I would be with this design, though it looks like crap in the blog. I liked it well enough that I didn't want to change much but wanted to experiment with color; the one with the light background is my favorite.