Semester 2 Final

 1.) My favorite project is my vectored illustration of my pride and joy, my loyal copper canine companion, Christmas. This project took me around a month to complete. The biggest challenge was something I didn't assess before choosing to vector my dog. As an aging golden retriever she has an insane amount of colors on her face. My teacher's only suggestion was to add more detail around the mouth, but because of her transparent hairs and whiskers and the tiny areas of various pigmentation, I had to settle for a brownish blob. I got way better at using the pen tool during this project. The only change I made to my original idea was that I didn't vector her collar since vectoring a metallic surface seemed torturous. Overall I love the outcome and my mom ordered prints. :)

2.) Elton John is my King. Which is why I decided to spend 10 hours and 20 dollars for a subscription to adobe in order to vector his face. This project only took me a week because I devoted an entire weekend to rushing through it. The biggest challenge was achieving balance and depth. I think I only achieved the former, as the outcome looks a tad flat. My teacher and class liked it though, and Im pretty satisfied. I didn't learn much in this project, except I finally figured out how to import fonts. I mean I already knew how, I just forgot. This final project was actually drastically different to my original idea. Originally I was going to vector and entire image of Elton playing the piano with two tiny dancers on the piano. However, after realizing how overly ambitious and time consuming that would be, I ended up just keeping his face from that image I had started to vector. Then I said heck, let's make him a moon. It took off from there. Haha get it because the rocket, because he's the rocket man?

3.) This project was supposed to be a general greeting card. But I directed it specifically towards the Kyoai Japanese exchange students, and then priced not to send it to them, like a professional. This only took me around a week. Its one of the simplest projects from this semester, but I really like how it came out. It's different compared to what I usually do. Very fluid, not completely clean, and I actually used lines. I didn't get any feed back on this project. Also there weren't any real struggles. I got more familiar with the brush tool and also got some practice with the gradient tool. That's it.



I was pretty efficient with my time in this class this last semester. I got everything done on (or almost on) time. I definitely had to research things here and there when Jaden was equally clueless as I was. But to be honest that wasn't a very frequent occurrence. Im a raging perfectionist. Which is the only reason I had anything done late. Luckily, Jaden kept me from going completely insane and assured me things were symmetrical, and that my work was good enough. Although I didn't always listen and often spent several more hours perfecting everything. Outside of eComm, I downloaded illustrator two months ago so I could start investing even more time in my work. I hope to be able to work on some projects independently this summer.

Over the last two years I think Ive grown a lot. But not exactly at an increased rate compared to the rest of my life as an artist. I think my artistic eye has mainly just developed. As it will continue to do. Besides that Ive gained familiarity with programs I previously hadn't even heard of. Which is pretty neat.

I think what I need to work on is getting better with photo manipulation/ editing. I never thought mockups would become the real torture for me. I feel pretty comfortable using illustrator but photoshop makes me nervous. I feel like I can't remember where things are and how to make things look like they weren't photoshopped. In general I should probably just watch more tutorials and practice independently more frequently. Which I intend to do.

This year I really enjoyed the freedom we got following extensive tutorials. Which I hated at the time, but now I can definitely see their value. I wouldn't really change anything about my experience in class. I mean sometimes I felt like I didn't have an adequate amount of time to make things at the level I wanted to. Besides that the only thing I didn't like was that we had to use the same theming and graphics on three things for the special event advertising. I mean I think mine turned out okay and everything, its just that after staring at the graphics for 3 weeks I don't exactly love them anymore. Next year I would like to explore more into transferring my hand drawn art into photoshop and making digital art. I want to explore more of the illustration side of graphic design and less the side dealing with advertisements and branding. Overall, this year in graphic design was a fun time.