Plague and Pink eye can cause Lack of Final...

Well. Dead week Wednesday morning at about 3 am I wake with a rather extreme fever; the kind when you cannot be warm enough and your toes feel frost-bite cold and your shivering and freezing and hallucinating out of your skull. And your themometer says 101.6

Later that week, around Friday, you get Pink eye too 'as sometimes accompanies viral infections.' Your fever went away but your throat hurts like hell and you're too weak to do more than make a snack and eat some of it (and take lots of drugs and herbs and such) before going back to bed.

But what of the DMF final? You were making good strides on Monday and Tuesday... Now you've called in sick for your Lab Aide times and are about to miss the deadline. Well, you reason (in a plagued haze), I can finish it up next week.

Oh wait, the mac labs are CLOSED finals week... and your contagion-ness doesn't go down to reasonable levels until Thursday of finals week anyway...

So thus I missed the lab time to finish my final. I could have done more to avoid this situation but I didn't realize until late in the game that the mac labs are closed.

My plan is to finish up early next term before my other classes get going too heavily, so I can deal with a low grade now, or even an "I" I suppose...

I hate whatever kind of plague I got, as it insists on lingering like smoke in the kitchen, not truly dangerous but irritating, annoying, and painful. And embarrassing, causing to miss all the nice post finals social gatherings.

Blargh.

Photo website

I finally figure out how to get around the mean mac server not letting me log in: I posted the photo website on my student account of sou.edu, here.

This series of photos is from SOU theatre's production of Romeo and Juliet; which I designed the lights for.

woo scratching is still fun

Recently I've been trying to get back to shape - that very first drawing assignment in Cody's class "What is the negative space of an object?" This would be cheating, as it is filled in instead of negative spaced, and was formed by outlining, but hey you can't draw with the side of your charcoal in photoshop.
Looking at this now that it's posted, I see much more depth than at first intended or thought out.
I would call this an abstract of rock and roll, as I witnessed during a summer working as a stagehand working in jacksonville's britt festival, setting up and spotlighting many bands and artists who fit the 'has been' catagory but still draw a large crowd of people Mile's age who like to sit on a lawn and drink wine with their rock and roll. Ok not really but both things do happen, just usually not at the same time. And I don't think you're old Miles, just older than me :)
So. Rock and roll bands of today that were big 2 decades ago. What preformance elements work well for them? Big and Loud come to mind: hence the huge mouth. Wild, non-conformist styles: hence the green and strange growth of hair. Props (walls of amplifiers, anyone?): the bone handled mic (kinda).
The flames also began as scribbles, but became an added spectacle (read: ooh, ahh, shiny) part of the rock and roll experience. We never had pyrotechnics at the Britt, but we did have a confetti cannon or two.
I notice the lowest level of flames is so non-spiky that it kinda looks like a crowd.
Finaly, the orientation of the figure: one of the biggest things is for the star to jump off of something (amplifier, piano)... the crowds love it, at least the first 10 times. So wild crazy jumping is a plus and represented here.

What can I do better, take further? Well, all of it. Try having a real human screaming into the mic, or just a huge head. The 'environment' could go further, actually have more than a huge speaker to suggest this is a stage. more detail is my primary direction it seems.

Contents layout project

Here it is, such as it goes.

Woah, I'm actually doing an image analysis

Ok, starting off with just looking at this image. Fuzzy purple figure with briefcase takes the focus, though the lack of details makes my eye want to go to the somewhat clear far away figure getting off the escalator. Fore ground dark figure really blurry. Point of view is really low, like the audience is a cockroach in this sparse clean world. Very bright contrast, Dennis would shake his head at the lack of range in levels. Only the purple other than a gray scale.

OK, what works and what doesn't. This is from a website of a UK design firm or something called 'nutcracker design.' The purple fits the rest of the current page, if one is going for boldness and not easy on the eyes. I can't decide if 'you' are supposed to be the purple figure or the one getting off the up escalator: the purple guy is kinda walking on screen from the application links, is in distinct (could be anyone), and has a bright shiny briefcase. However, he also doesn't have a face, and escalator guy does have a face and some definition. Also esca-boy is at the focus of lines from his coworker's heads and feet, and the columns also point there. I suppose purple boy fits the rule of thirds a bit more.

Overall, I don't really like this image. It conveys energetic motion but with so much non-clarity... but hey, they are a design company, hiring other designers ( I assume) so I don't fit as the target audience.

Movie Posters

I liked this assignment. Finding out how far to take things in crazyness, futzing with text, keeping it simple.

Lookin at movie posters

First, an introduction. These two posters really do hang side-by-side on my living room wall at home. The transformers was put up by a former roommate who didn't keep it when they moved out. We left it up so the walls wouldn't be completely bare. The Indiana Jones poster was purchased a little earlier this year at that poster sale that happens in the SU courtyard every year.
The first thing one notices about these two is that they are literally night and day opposites. After looking analytically for a few moments I realized that they are also opposites in a design and figurative sense as well as literal.
Indiana is busy, bright, cramming information on in a collage like format. Also Indiana appears to be entirely hand drawn. Transformers is dark, sparse, and has a computer generated sharp lines and corners feel to the text and images.
When we got the Indiana poster we commented on the possibility of it being a re-print, after all the original posters had to have come out in, like, the stone ages, right? Also it was cheap. Now I realize that the poster is very good at reminding the audience of the movie and the characters and the highlights and such. The Transformers poster is much better at drawing one in and sparking curiosity. I wouldn't be surprised if the Indiana poster was designed and made after the movie came out as a collectors item, while the Transformers poster is an advertising piece.

Typography Lab stuff

I found it challenging to find a balance betwen simple and complex. I know this is something everyone everywhere, but I feel like talking about it: Simple is better, but after just a few bits you don't feel like you've worked on it enough so you want to do more.
Miles suggestion to save copies and try other things seems like a better idea (in hind sight) than continuing to add things to a simple piece.

Attempt collage

Despite flu-like body aches (please god don't let me be getting the plague) while working on this I actually like a few elements of it.
First, I'm a complete sucker for Blue. When I design lights for a show (theatre), I instruct my assistant and co-artistic-people to be very vocal about the level of Blue light in the show, otherwise I will eventually have a completely blue show.
This, this did edge quite far into the blue spectrum, with only a few bits of other colors to keep some excuse of ballance. But I think it's pretty, so there.
The other thing I like is the cycle. For me it starts with the woman crying down into the waterfalls then up and around. The cloud's shape could have been more supportive or interesting, but I don't know if I'll be getting back into the lab to work on this again this week.
I also like water melon, can you tell?

Crayon-scribble Walle and Crane

I sat down determined to put pen to pixel and scribble something and learn/practice with photoshop's drawing capabilities.
The stating point was forcing the stylis onto the pad and then scribbling. The scribbles evolved into the crane.
Next I tried the 3d isometric perspective cube, which became the robot. Color I was just beginning to explore when it was time to go, but I did take a moment to add his little insect friend.
Now I'm using the Walle and Crane fill-in for a story to start other 'what can I do with this medium' works; my biggest frustration is that the only straight line drawing tool I've found is the vector based pen and line thing. I really wish photoshop had something like good ole microsoft paint's straight line drawer so I could click two points and have a pixel (not vector) line between the two which I could then smuge erase and toy with like the brush strokes. Sigh.
But still, this is SO much fun!

Platon's Pics: un worldly

I followed the link on the converse add done by Platon, it led to a New Yorker article about Planton's recent photographing of american soldiers in a before and after kind of style.

These two I picked out to represent the most and least realistic looking of Platon's photos. The sailor appears, to me, to be nearly normal other than B&W, and some fuzzy background and otherwise somewhat 'aged photo' looking. The gun-toting soldier looks un real, intensely detailed so the gun barrel seems to be poking me in the face but also my eye cannot firgure out the depth so it also looks like a flat drawing.
This erry effect is even stranger on the human faces in the other photos through the link. The wedding picture creeps me out even more than this soldier (I wonder if I can put that pic in the middle of this post...Woo you can click and drag photos! OK, anyway,
I know in my head this is a wedding and a happy time, but this looks as happy as a funeral being broken up by the SS.

Looking at the nerd

I was looking around google images when this popped up as part of a posting referring to Time magazine's putting out a top 10 list of top 10 video games of 2007. The image has nothing to do with the article other than Halo 3 getting the top spot and Microsoft owning the developer of Halo.
It's small enough that I can't read the year but from the disk ole bill is holding this has to be from the eighties.
I'm wondering about the goals of the photographer who took this. For me the disk takes first focus, followed by bill's eyes and glasses area. I suppose that follows the goal of the cover to be about this new-fangled thing called software.
Not to go into too deeply about how this picture would be done different now, almost 30 years later I can't help but notice that bill's face is nearly blending into the background, and a very different color from the hand 'holding' the disk.
The background kinda lends a halo or glow to bill's head, but the mutual colors making him blend in and have orange skin- did people like bill in the 80s? It doesn't look like it.

City block in winter

I was playing with photoshop, looking towards creating bacgrounds for a web comic, exploring the pressure sensitivity vs. controling the size, as well as trying to remember perspective and vanishing points.
The buildings started out level then were skewed, tough I didn't really draw them straight to start with so...
It is so much fun to play in photoshop!

Just keep swimming...

I really like the expression and realized how it kinda looked like she was pretending to be a fishy, so I combined the scratch assignment with today's photo editing stuff.
I worked on the shadows around the eyes and tried to add a subtle halo that ended up not being very subtle.
Again the colors, I enjoyed the highlights on the greenery and color layers for her hair.
I'm not sure what but I would like to take another go and work with the color of her face, see if I could remove some of the cloudy day effect; or turn her into a mermaid. (feel free to suggest how to go about that, anyone who reads this)

The first other...

This is my other. Okay, my significant other; I totally cheated and used a picture of my girlfriend I had from this summer, which if you look carefully at the greenery you will realize it's not fall in the background.
I promise to complete the going out and facing the fear of photographing the other when I have time, which is not on Mondays.
I played with the color and brightness mostly; taking down the brightness of the background, bringing up the blue of the house and the magenta and red of her hair, giving the turtles some more pop.
I like the diversity of color a lot - I will probably say that a lot as I pay a lot of attention to color and should keep value in mind more often.

I may play with this one more later if I get back to it, I like the lines already though.

Here are most of my Letter postings, Miles really makes photoshooping this into good pictures look easy...

Obama Image percieveing

Obama Image response

First Glance: A woman with an afro and a gun. She stands out against the white background better than obama. Next I notice obama in a strange headdress and robe, or suggestion of robe.

At which point my personal perspective kicks in, realizing this is an anti-obama drawing, and as i am Pro- obama I react negatively to the drawing, at first dismissing is as propaganda. But it's an assignment so I press on and look again.

I still don't recognize the gun lady, but her stance and head tilt (non-dominating) contrast with her eyebrows and apparel, and gun (dominant).

Historically speaking I draw from my experiences that both Republican and Democrats or their supporters will say anything with the smallest grain of truth to support their puffed up story, usually with the intention of making the other look bad.

Further scrutiny points out the picture of Osama bi Laden the wall above a fireplace burning the american flag. Though I learned in boy scouts that the proper way to retire a flag that was worn out is by burning I'm sure that's not the message here. I notice obama is wearing a head wrap similar to the picture of bi Laden, and his eyes are closed. Both people are very racially caricatured.

Ethically speaking, can propaganda be ethical? the supports may say yes, those not in support will say no. Out right lies are less ethical than facts stated fairly and openly, but it's difficult to call truth completely ethical without the whole truth.

How is our writing or the writing of others influenced by symbolic language we use to convey a message? All cultures use symbols to communicate meaning within groups?
-The symbol which stands out the most would be the terrorist-dress of the gun lady and the burning flag- both connecting obama with terrorism and anti-americanism.

Criticallyspeaking I can't think of anything new to say

Technicallythis picture is very simple, hand drawn with non saturate or bright colors. I believe that is the style the New Yorker uses regularly.

To sum up, this picture is anti- obama propaganda which isn't any more truthful or ethical or factual than the sara palin photoshop job.

Jelly in Jail

I'll pretend there was a lot of though and effort in this and call it a "study" in lines, squiggles, and of course the colors. and texturing with the eraser.

Playing with Photoshop to create goofy shapes and solid colors reminded me most of all of being a kid with crayons. It was mentioned in class how kids are not afraid of attempting to draw anything within some reason.
This kid giving his all kicking this huge soccer ball took me back to those happy days when I could run forever and my goal in life was to Kick The Ball Hard. Also I could see some inspiriation; the kid's taking on a challenge that he may or may not really over come, but he doesn't care how he looks like everyone does
and looks awesome doing so...
And yes, this is completely a Dennis style cheating drawing; but I like it so much I'm posting it anyway so take that Miles!

Good Quote

"We only have a small spark of Madness, we musn't lose it" - Robin Williams"