Project 5

Just in time for Christmas! (I love my stupid penguin children)

Project 4

This Project was to create a postcard from a video-game. I had to draw one character (Diglett), make the text, and one other element (Poke-ball stamp). I think it turned out quite cute.

Lesson 15: Making Screen Graphics

The final lesson covered how to create and save graphic for different types of media. This includes saving for phone, screen, web, print, everything a designer would ever really need. I used all these chapters to create several fake logos for a friend of mine in the business department.

Lessons 12, 13 & 14: Curvature & Pen Tools and Rounded Corners

I feel kinda bad for combining all these, but I used all these tools when making my charcters for our first Illustrator project (that should be posted above). Anyways:

Lesson 12: This showed how to use the curvature tool to crate organic smooth edges. This tool is done one anchor point at a time, so it is a bit tedious, but it is also useful.

Lesson 13: The Pen tool was the focus of this lesson. As far as I've used it, this a much more computer-controlled version of the pencil tool, allowing one to place and modify anchor points or work one strand at a time. You can make sharp or smooth transitions and straight or curved edges and lines.

Lesson 14: This lesson covered all the various ways and styles one could use to make rounded corners in an image. I don't know for sure, but an entire chapter on rounded corners seems a bit... well, much to me.

Well, I used all of these chapters, plus previous, to make my little character for our project. Pokemon!

Lesson 11: Painting and Erasing

This lesson cover one of the most important tools in Illustrator: the paint tool. It showed how to color, erase, manipulate paths and change colors to create images. I did a quick painting of the crane from earlier, nothing too fancy though.

Lesson 9 & 10: Building Custom Paths and The Pencil Tool

The next few lessons can be grouped together rather easily, so I apologize. These two lessons covered the pencil tool: how to draw, manipulate, and create custom path and shapes. I used it to create the outline for a simple crane, which will probably be painted later on.

Lesson 7 & 8: Strokes and Creating Text

Lesson 7 covered how to use and manipulate stokes in order to make arrowheads, dots, and frames. This allows for 3D effects and shadows.
Lesson 8 covered how to create, find, and manipulate text. This can be combined with the text in order to create special characters.

I used both of these in order to create this poster of a show later this year (y'all should come see it).

Lesson 6: Color and Swatches

This lesson covered the different types of color "groups" as I'll call them: RGB, CMYK, and HSB.
It also showed how the eyedropper tool and swatches work.

For my project, I made an gathered colors from both outside documents and my own experience to create what I call a 60's color palate

Lesson 5: Drawing Shapes

WHEN CAPTAIN AMERICA THROWS HIS MIGHTY SHIELD

Project 2 & 3

I'm actually quite proud of these two, I think they turned out quite beautifully

Project 2 we made to create a matte painting in Photoshop, combining several pictures to make one.

Project 3 was making another movie poster, but blending, shading and adding elements. I think it turned out quite well!  (though, apparently my tiny Baymax was not needed)

Lesson 4: Drawing Lines

This lesson shows how to use, make and edit the various lines and line tools. In all honesty, drawing individual lines for something that could be made using the shape tool does seem a bit much, but for those times you do need just plain lines, this works well.

Personally, I made a tiny city/logo. I think it's quite cute.

ILLUSTRATOR Lessons 1, 2, & 3

The first three lessons under the illustrator tutorials covered the basic fundamentals of the program one needs to know before creating images.

Lesson 1: This lesson covered how to open, create documents, and save withing Illustrator. It also went over the differences between the several systems of measurements, namely inches, millimeters, pica, and points.

Lesson 2: This lesson covered the fundamentals art-board. Specifically, it showed how to make, duplicate, and arrange the boards.

Lesson 3: Lesson 3 covered how to move around the artwork itself. It covered the various zoom levels and options, and  the various methods of moving between multiple pieces of art.

Lesson 15- Creating Web Graphics

Lesson 15 covered the process and tips for creating good looking web graphics. Most importantly, it brushed over the differences between CYMB system and the RGB system of colors, and the different and best formats for web pictures.

Lesson 14- Printing Your Image

This lesson covered printing and the various parts that go into it. Personally, I don't foresee much printing in my future, but I could be wrong. Either way, it's good information to know.

Lesson 13- Creating and Formatting Text

This lesson covered Photoshop's text application. The vector-based text is really nice, clean edges are generally important. Personally, I do not like all the commands are formatted, but I managed to get an agreeable little fake book cover from it.

Lesson 12- Camera Raw Synopsis

This lesson covered Camera Raw, an independent program that runs inside of Photoshop. It's primarily meant to make global edits to pictures, though it can be used to removed blemishes and unsightly pieces of background. It can add amazing shadows, highlights, and colors to any photograph... with the right edits.

Lesson 11- Retouch and Heal

This lesson covered probably the most widely known application of Photoshop- photo retouching. It showed how to remove blemishes, unwanted hairs, and how to non-destructively brighten and change colors.

I used a picture I took last year of one of my middle-school friends (ack, I really should go back and visit sometime)... Anyways, here's what came of it!

 Before:

After:

Lesson 10- Quick Mask Mode

This lesson covered how to use the quick mask mode in a variety of ways in order to carefully select, edit, and change an image. The videos covered how to use these tricks in order to make a stained glass effect (which I think turned out wonderfully).

Lesson 9- Making Selections

Lesson 9 showed how to make selections with a variety of tools, and how to use selections to edit your piece more precisely.
Personally, I used it for space. Space is pretty cool sometimes.

Original

New

 

Project 1- Movie Poster

Lesson 8- Balancing Colors

Lesson 8 was almost a continuation of 7, going into deeper detail of how color balance, vibrance, and saturation work. The vibrance feature is quite lovely, so far it's my preferred adjustment.

Anyways, here's an image I took at the color run that I choose to use.

Before:

After:

Lesson 7- Brightness and Contrast

This lesson covered the different ways to change the color, or luminance of an image. The auto functions work rather well, though it is nice to be able to adjust the image to my liking. As a note though, color is really subjective. There were instances when his finished product looked worse than the one two or three adjustments before. It's really all up to personal preferences.

But anyways, here is the before and afters for an image I took that I adjusted with the auto-color option.

Before:

After:

Lesson 6- Saving Synopsis

Lesson 6 was over the various formats one could save in, which will come in handy later on. Knowing what preferences and settings to use with different file types will save me from messing up an important project later.

Lesson 1,2&3- The very out of order synopsis

(Hopefully, after this, I'll actually go in order. We'll see what happens)

Lesson 1- This lesson covered probably the most basic, but the most important aspect of Photoshop: opening a photo. For me, opening a photo straight from my computer generally works, but it's good to know how to open an image from my browser or cross platform should that ever change.

Lesson 2- Lesson 2 covered the basics of moving around in Photoshop. How to scroll, how to zoom, how to adjust preferences, how to change the view, and so forth. Very important should one wish to edit an image effectively.

Lesson 3- This lesson went over the building blocks over digital imagery: pixels, resolution, and image size. Understanding how these three objects/principles work will allow one to better export, import, and create images.

Lesson 4- Cropping

(I know I'm doing these slightly out of order, synopsis on 1-3 coming soon)

So, here's the image I started out with. It's one I took during the Freshmen visit to the bombing memorial. 

My original plan was to just move the picture over and brush over the dark areas with black, but I really didn't like the girl (circled in red) there. So, I decided to try out the "Miracle Fill" option the guy in the video kept mentioning.

I completely agree with him on the miracle part. So all that was left to do was crop the image, sharpen, and fill in some black areas. I quite like the finished result.

Lesson 5- Introducing Layers Project

I don't really know why I decided to go with a tutu fairy. Maybe the theme of "magical creatures", courtesy of the pegasus from the video, rubbed off on me.

A normal family photo

(When you decide to Photoshop a man off the side of a cliff for your first assignment.)

Whelp, here goes nothing