A picture of Dali with cats

 

A New Dawn

This week in Media and Society we discussed both old and new media.

I fell that communication is a key part of the human identity. We have been performing this act since the beginning of the age of man, weather it was spoken word, pictures, or written. It is what defines us, or culture and society.

Traditional forms of media (radio, television, magazines, newspapers and books) was one way. Meaning that the procedure controlled the message. The audience did not help shape the message but just listen and absorb it. This made it easy for governments to create propaganda that had people shape the exact opinion they wanted. It help start wars and keep certain groups oppressed by spreading lies.

Today we live in a new dawn of media. We are connected to the information highway 24/7 not only by our computers but by our smart phones, tablets, and mp3 devices. New Media sends out an unlimited amount of messages by an unlimited amount of authors. The audience can choose to be active by commenting or just ignore it entirely. People use social networking to promote their ideas as well as products or services. They get to know their fans by using Twitter, Facebook and yes still MySpace.

I know I use Lady GaGa a lot as an example, but she is just so easy. On the road she posts pictures from her iPhone to better connect with her fans. They admire her and have over 1k in comments while sharing the photos on their own pages. On Facebook alone she has over 52 million followers. Just think of all the people she is reaching every day, hour, minute.

Cultivation Analysis

This week in Media and Society one of the concepts covers was Cultivation Analysis. According to Stanley J. Baran cultivation analysis is when "television cultivates or constructs a reality of the world that, although possibly inaccurate, becomes accepted simply because we are as a culture believe it to be true."It is amusing that people would actually live their life through television. But those people are out there like octomom Nadya Suleman who undergone various plastic surgical treatments to emanate Angelina Jolie. She is only famous for having a lot of kids and now doing anything she can to be in the spotlight including being in the adult industry.

According to George Gerber if you watch more than four hours of television today you see the world as a mean terrible place, but not immediately. What you see on television or do in a video game you will act out. But is this really the case? Diablo 3 is Blizzard's best selling game of this year (but you can't forget World of Warcraft with 10.7 million subscribers) with 6.5 million sold so far. In 2000 Diablo 2 sold over 4 million copies. Every few months a violent video game comes out but what sort of effect do you really think they have on society?

According to the FBI in 2010 about 1.2 million "violent crimes occurred nationwide, a decrease of 6.0 percent from the 2009 estimate." In the 2010 Preliminary Annual crime report violent crime went down 4% from the following year.

I think parts of this concept from the 60s is stil valid. People aren't slaves to television or video games but make it apart of their everyday lives. They discuss plots or actions with friends, buy merchandise and dress up as the characters for Halloween.

References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw9DsOA1Y-w
Introduction to Mass Communication
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Best_selling_Blizzard_games
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr
http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=audienceresec

Digital Painting: 101

I have had my Wacom Intuos 4 tablet a little over a year (thanks to Full Sail), but I still haven't gotten very comfortable with it. For a school project we had to make a picture that illustrates a Walt Whitman poem.

I had to make one for "O Captain, Oh Captain!" I had a lot of fun drawing the thumbnail pictures in my pre-pro, but went with the theme below. I also added in pictures I took of the sky and the ocean, to create a bit of variety.

I had a lot of fun with this project, so I decided to play with painting in photoshop a bit more. I love how this piece came out, good enough to eat! YUM!

Mechanical Object - Polaroid Camera

For my Designing Computer Graphics final we had to pick a mechanical object from a designated group of images. I chose the Polaroid Camera, because it looked like fun. 

The only requirements for the project was to use Illustrator, and not to use live trace/paint. After a few days of fighting with my meshes, I finished my project on time. Very excited about the outcome, I could have added more details, but maybe when I'm more familiar with the tools and program, I'll have more patience.

Now that I handed in my project, I have to wait to see the outcome of my hard work.

Tea Concept Label

For our second project in Digital Computer Graphics, we had to make a drink label using the following guidelines:

-No gradients, transparencies, filters, effects, blurs, blends or Live Trace
-3 colors
-Draw with the pen tool
-Use only one font

We were given a list of drinks, I choose the organic tea, which will be sold to upper-middle class adults 20-40, new age hippie yuppies. The fictional company is based in Vermont.

Here is my initial concept for this project:

I noticed I forgot to give the tea a flavor, so I added that to the label and changed the size and placement of some elements:

For the final product, I just added a few minor details, nothing drastic. But I did notice that for some reason the "i"s look like they are capitalized. I used the "Save for Web and Devices" feature in Illustrator all three times. I'm not sure why the image became distorted:

I decided to save the file as .pdf to see if I would get the same results and it came out fine. I'm going to explore this issue further to find out why that will occur. 

This is my final image, I promise I'm not going to play with it anymore:

Self-Portrait

Having a lot of fun working with vector images this month. Here is my self-portrait, didn't want to get too carried away :)

Kicking it with Roy Lichenstein

For a school project, we had to make a digital pop art piece. After having some fun with Warhol style screen prints, but going to play with the colors a bit more. 

I decided to give Roy Lichenstein's comic book style a try. As you can see I'm a huge fan of True Blood. Can't wait for the new season to start! 

With brighter colors

Kuler: Interactive Color Themes

I love finding new sites and tools that really help me expand my creativity. One new tool I came across in the Adobe line is Kuler.

This site is a little gem because you can create color swatches from photos. 

You can easily upload a photo or use the Flickr library (which is great if your just siting around and looking for inspiration). The site is very user friendly and creates different swatches based on the mood you click on.

If you like to be in total control, you can make a custom swatch by moving the circles to different colors in the picture.

In order to save your color swatch you have to be signed in with an Adobe ID (which is free, and gives you access to other Adobe sites and Adobe TV).

I recommend saving it as a "public" swatch so you can easily upload it into Illustrator. I hate manually saving brushes and other add ons, so I really like this next feature.

In Illustrator, you can find the Kuler window under "Extensions". 

Since we saved our file as a public swatch, we can easily find it in the search menu. This window also provides a live connection to the Kuler site, so you will have new choices when they become available. 

You can add the swatch to your swatches window by pressing the add to swatches button at the bottom of the window.

Did you loose your Welcome Screen?

Awhile back I thought the Welcome Screen was very annoying for Adobe Illustrator. I didn't realize what a useful tool it really was. 

You can start different projects, open up recent items, watch tutorial videos or load a template. It is also very easy to create a file for mobile and other devices. 

The content type menu lets you create almost anything, making illustrator a very versatile program.

Getting Back the "Welcome Screen"

I never read the Help menu, so I kept typing in "Welcome" or "Welcome Screen" and nothing would be appear. After a few moments I just started to stare at my screen and of course the answer was staring back at me.

Needles to say I am never checking "Don't show again" ever again! The Welcome Screen is a timesaver.

Coding Errors

I was browsing the web to check out design trends and came across this one web design firm, that apparently didn't check the site on all platforms. This is pretty embarrassing, since their main business is to create websites. 

Here is an example of something you don't want to happen to you:

Starting class, again

Life is an endless journey, I like to make a lot of pit stops along the way. After taking some time off from Full Sail, I'm returning on the 27th! I am very excited, and can't wait to get to the design classes. Hopefully next month. 


Current Projects

• Supernal: I'm currently working on a short video clip to describe the Supernal movie project on IndieGoGo. This film is currently in development, and we have a lot of talented people working on this indie/student film. More details to follow, so check back often!
• Anton Reed: Currently setting up various sites for Anton Reed, an amazing musician and composer. He is currently having his album mixed by Joel Rekiel (http://www.joelrekielaudio.com/) 

More details to follow on both projects, so check back often

Working on the main page

Just finished the layout for blackchairdesigns.com, simply elegant! The background is going to be a soothing gray so it doesn't take long to upload. I think I'm going to put up the main page in a day or two, even if the other pages or menu are created yet.

Supernal logo

Just make a quick logo for an independent film that is in pre-production:

I was going for a Dario Argento feel and I think I captured it. I really enjoy making quick logos :) 

Status Updates:
Currently resizing and scanning work to put in a portfolio on carbonmade and fighting with Illustrator (Photoshop is mostly my main tool at this point)

Design Principles for the Web

Outline of Topics Covered:

I had to cut some slides to keep my speech under 8 minutes. There is also a debate on what the exact number of principles there are. Each person groups them differently, but a nice list of resources that I used will be placed at the end.

I have decided to post the different topics on an old blog of mine: http://vmhelp.blogspot.com/ so I can better organize the information.

School Work

Been a bit busy with rearranging the house and starting a summer program...

Having a bit of fun putting together a PowerPoint Presentation on applying design principles to the web. Here is a rough outline:

As soon as I have some free time I'm going to discuss each one in detail either here or wordpress.

Wacom and Me

I love my Wacom pad, but still not use to using it (love the feel of charcoal and paint on my skin). But I had fun with my tablet none the less:

Just started experimenting with vector images, here is my first one:

A work in progress

Ok, so yes, I too have my lazy moments.... really don't feel like getting out of bed, so I am sitting here with my sweet tea (apparently not that lazy since I went and picked one up at 8 am)... browsing through job ads. It is a pain, but has to be done. 


In the meantime I am working on getting all my work together for my portfolio, I think I will host it at wix.com for now. 


A current project of mine is creating and editing video clips for a dvd. Here is my first draft of the main menu:

I am going to change the menu fonts a bit so the colors don't bleed. 

No Ma.... you can't use the yoga mat!

Hello and welcome to my blog! This is Riley... and she loves making my life more difficult... but in a fun way! I have a few cats, they are great for inspiration and are always doing something photo shot worthy. 

I am just starting to get all my work together for my portfolio, since I have a lot of extra time on my hands. But today I decided to take it a bit easy and have a bit of fun in Photoshop:

Now that I am looking at both of them side by side, I think I like the left one a bit better, the purple hues stand out more.

Happy Mother's Day everyone!