Young Adults' Interactions with Media (Section 1)

Since I'm always ranting about young people and how much time they spend with media, especially social media, and since I'm always complaining about the sorry state of movie theater attendance and non-Internet connected television set usage, I am finally going to start gathering eclectic "research". Although, I assure you the articles I'll link to will be from sources I deem trustworthy, I am not writing a paper or any other such formal endeavor, hence the quotation marks around research.

Hopefully, if I find myself in another one of my 'rants turned to debates' situations, I won't be talking out the side of my neck. And, hopefully, any stats I gather will both correct my preconceived notions and ascertain and support some of my assumptions (because even though I'm never absolutely right, I'm never absolutely wrong either). Then again, who is? That's a rhetorical question, please don't ponder it.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/radioheads-how-students-listen-to-music/

dancing clips via YouTube

Stylistic Reference: Ti Watching a Hippopotamus Hunt

If I choose to run with a complete Egyptian style composition, I will use Ti Watching a Hippopotamus Hunt as my reference. Of course, I'm not going to copy it; I will probably deviate from it, since an artist's take on anything naturally embodies something of that artist. The main purpose of this reference is actually the treatment of space on a two-dimensional surface. Again, my animation is not a copy of this space, but would merely be informed by it. (That way, I wouldn't be accused of drawing off the top of my head or pulling something out of my nose at the last minute.) I've had this particular artwork in mind, as a reference, for a couple of weeks now.

Collage Animation Resource

After chatting briefly with a classmate, I brought up my home to describe some trees (I changed my subject to a dry land nature scene), and I decided to do some image searching for general Mississippi 'treescapes'. So, I'm thinking of using tree types and a other general land properties to compose my setting. As I know, even the best imagined scenes are not composed off the top of one's head. I need pictorial references, so I'll place those in a folder on my desktop. Here, is where I'll collect links to articles about my home state's land that I find relevant.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archive/jul09/fungus0709.htm

http://msucares.com/crops/soils/

http://jeffreysmithart.com/cloudy-day-on-the-mississippi-river-plein-air-painting-on-the-rivers-edge/

Also, I would like to express a student's indebtedness to common license images and non-copyrighted image references for personal use. I would particularly like to thank the generosity of blog sites, which allow you to use images for non-commercial, non-copyright infringing projects, as they now so often comprise such a large percentage of Google Image search results.

I'll also throw this link in:

http://federaltwist.blogspot.com/2009/12/mississippi-delta-landscape-reading.html

Octupi (from YouTube)

I don't know why YouTube has to be at the forefront of everything, but you have to do what you have to do.

All right! My first permalink.

I've never had an active hyperlink on my blog before, so I'm a little excited about testing it out. Hopefully, it will work, and I won't have to try to rediscover the article I'm linking to on the original website. Until now, I've had no reason to use the "permalink" feature, but I need this article for research for a speech, and I'm not in the position to print it at this point. If this works, I can print it at school tomorrow without hassle. Hurrah!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/science/earth/01forest.html

If anybody at all is still reading this blog

I have one more quick post to add. The last MCA lecture of the semester, Jack Myers and some quick comments about the two senior shows.

Jack Myers is an MCA alumnus who graduated sometime in the early 90's; I don't remember if it was '90, '91, or '92. Regardless, he talked about his experience at MCA, what made him decide to go to art school and become an artist, and the importance of staying up-to-date with the changing technologies to stay relevant and on the market. His advice to us:

1. Keep learning; graduating is not the end of education
2. Learn a different skill set
3. Don't get too comfortable; you don't want to get caught in a position that you can't find anything else to do with your career because you have a limited skill set and no alternate plans.
4. Never get caught three versions behind in a computer program (snicker, snicker)
5. Be brave or fake it until you gain more confidence
6. Produce your own work, and put as much of it out there as possible, even if you don't like it
7. Promote yourself; times have changed, and it's a good idea to have a portfolio of your work handy.
8. Most importantly: Work Hard. There's no smooth-sailing in the professional art world; you'll always be busting your butt, just be sure you're busting your butt doing something you love.

Drawing Comment, the beginning of the Spring lecture series

if anyone as actually still looking at this blog.
I believe the special lecture toward the beginning of the semester, was the first visiting artist lecture we'd had. For two months, the upper gallery was fitted with a display of three long-practicing illustrators' mass-published work, illustrations featured in magazines such as Time magazine and national newspapers such as the New York Times. These three acclaimed illustrators were Steve Brodner, Anita Kunz and Luba Lukova.

Drawing Comment: Illustration & Social Commentary was, in my opinion one of the highlights of academic events of the semester. Joel Priddy moderated an open discussion panel with the artists and the atmosphere was exciting. We should all be thankful for how privileged we are to get to meet and discuss with professional artists. But, lauding aside, it was an entertaining educational experience. I say 'entertaining' because everybody on stage had a sense of humor. Each artist talked about his or her journey as artists and illustrators and what being an illustrator means to the world and how illustrations affect the audience perception of a given issue/event. Brodner's story about Martha Stewart was a hilarious account about the responsibilities one has as an illustrator and as a visual artist in general. Kunz spoke a bit about the process of gaining an audience as an illustrator, how to reach the point where you are commissioned to produce your own work, and the changing technologies and how they affect the field of illustration. Lukova talked about responsibilities as an illustrator as well and being aware of what type of audience will be viewing your work and the reactions you can expect from it.

With the addition of comprehensive answers to good audience questions, the panel gave great advice about being a visual artist, how to stay relevant in today's far-reaching media environment, having both traditional and new-technology skills, self-publishing, staying in touch with your audiences, the general work climate of illustration, past and present, and how to be productive, not only as an illustrator but as any type of visual artist.

Summary: MCA Design Candidate Lectures

As I am sure we are all aware of, there were several "Lunchtime Lectures", this semester, featuring candidates for our department of design. I missed the first one, but attended the remaining three.The first lecture I attended was Shawn Simmons': She works primarily with bookmaking. I should have taken more thorough notes. I thought I did, but I probably tried to retain it all. Anyway, I remember that she does have teaching experience and that she works with digital as well as print media. She talked about the importance of teaching students the basics of using the evolving digital tools. An example she showed us and talked about was a project she had her students do recently, in which they had to make some page layouts, and the pages had animated text. The purpose of this assignment was to give students experience in successfully creating a graphically-interactive text document that preserves form and functions.
     But the lecture's focus wasn't entirely one-sided. As important as it is for design artists to develop expandable digital skills, retaining the ability to adapt layouts to the printed page is also important.
    The artist also showed some very interesting book arts work of her own, featuring hand-crafted books that employed sculptural aspects. This was an exercise she also gave her students; not only were their final products to be well-designed and well-crafted, but they also were to maintain readability.I'll try to be more brief from here-on-out.
Phil Winfield: He gave an informative lecture about design and its importance and demonstrated this point with a survey of his career at LSU, rebranding their imagery, website, etc.
The part about the actual updating and the necessity of redesigning things was somewhat interesting. The most memorable point to me during this stage was when he showed and briefly described the original LSU brochure, and then showed us the documentation of the design process he used to recreate LSU's logos, brochure layout, revise its web layout.
Unfortunately, the lecture as a whole was for the most part boring because Winfield had so much to say about everything he and the design department at LSU worked on, publishing, distribution on campus, printing versus PDFs and web documents, etc.

Willie Cole Lectures at the Brooks Museum

The first lecture I went to this semester was back in February, when artist Willie Cole came to talk about his featured exhibition, Willie Cole: Works on Paper. It is one of the best lectures I've been to since I came to this school. The exhibition is still showing at the Brooks through May.
      Cole started out giving a brief overview of his starting projects. His first major project was a series of cardboard cutout bodies with Xeroxes of Nelson Mandela's face posted on them all. It was an installation, and it had a track of, I think it was Nelson Mandela's speech, playing over and over again, he said. Mind you, this was done back in the 1970s, during the Apartheid epic unfolding in South Africa. Cole has a broad avenue of interests, and although he went to art school and majored in 2D media, he has made works in sculptural media and work using digital technology as an aid. He also made a digital video, which he talked about at the lecture, is called Sumsara (2010), featuring eight actors on three different screens, crying, in a repeating cycle. He said that the repetition is based on the Buddhist concept of birth, death, and rebirth. I think the word "sumsara" is the name of this concept.
     Although Cole uses digital tools, his work is mostly 'analog' media. The highlight of the exhibit are his works featuring irons, the "Works on Paper". In his compositions he explores the concept of the iron as a representative figure. The poster advertising the exhibit, for instance, shows his photograph of himself wearing African tribal garb; the garment being made of iron plates that were Photoshopped onto his print. But as aforementioned, the phase of iron-driven design is not his only set of 2D work, and the exhibit is definitely worth seeing.

Grand Finale! (cue the fireworks and streamers)

A Week Late, but here's my self-InDesign project

Hot Potato, Cold Potato (these are cold)

A bit overdue, but here are my perspective artworks that were due last Monday:

 I should have posted this piece of junk a long time ago, even though it is currently a stand alone image. Besides, as many hours I blew on this one, I am not remaking a two point perspective exterior. I'll just get this one over with.

I'm beside myself with joy!

I finally got this gorilla off my back. I hope my client likes it. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you the brochure I designed for my "client":

Layout Options

Here is what I'm working with for my "client's" brochure:

It's not going to be so busy of course. All the other things are supplementary designs I'll choose from.

Shoot! Just my twisted luck.

Well, since I can't print these images in color to reference in my sketchbook, I'll just have to post them on my blog. If no one else is aware, or if just already have your images printed and ready-to-go, the color printer next door needs its toner "replenished", and since it's Sunday evening, there is no one here to do it. I am royally peeved about my misfortune with this.

In Design for the First Time.

Here is the original file: 

And here is my version of it (with a different topic and color scheme):

Once you're past the frustration, this is rather fun.

Quick Backstory

You want to know what sucks? I spent hours on the original image and had to end up deleting the punk because I tried to edit it in Photoshop and bring it back into Illustrator, but that messed things up. The first one did have windows, and I am sorely disappointed that it didn't work out for me. All that work; all that time!

Perspective Assignment

I guess something is better that nothing... Fear not, I will turn in the rest late, but in a timely manner, so hold on for the completed assignment, please.

Reloaded Logos

Here's the first project I've modified! I worked on the three logos that were shown in critique. I hope you all will want to eat at Little Caesar's now.

By the way, I hope my viewers clicked on the "read more" link on the original post of this to see the logo designs last week.

Illustrator "Live" tool designs

I decided to get funky with a couple of the shapes; I really enjoy that "add anchor points" feature. This is probably the most fun I've had during my experience learning to use Illustrator. So, first I am posting the shape design, which I'm proud of having completed earlier than I've completed any thing so far...

And now for the live trace of the teacher:

  

I had a heckuva time getting this one together folks. It may not look like it, but I spent about a couple of hours on this baby. Not so elaborate, but I was primarily focused on playing the paintbrush tool and blend options... of course it would be after I post the thing that I just remembered I could take it to Photoshop... Oh well, I'll leave that chore for another day.

Live trace, Live paint in-class practice

Instead of using the photo of our teacher during the tutorial, I used the rubber duck, but I may practice with the teacher's image later and put it onto this post (since the teacher 'insisted' on us using that image).

Illustrator Designs & Logos

I've been meaning to post this...

This is a picture of a page in National Geographic magazine featuring the National Geographic photo contest winners for that month. I forgot the names, but I remember that the guy who did the top image manipulated it in Adobe Photoshop, which is why I'm posting this:

Here are three of the designs we practiced during the class tutorial...

Also, here is the first of my five enhanced Illustrator designs:

 Voila!

Ten Illustrator Designs: So much for simple and quick

Adobe Illustrator Designs: The Super Six (Ring Designs and Shapes)

Stop Motion Clip: What Goes Around, Comes Around

Stop Motion Video Clips

There is one video I found to be neat; I've been thinking of doing something that involves the properties of geological processes. An here also is my in-class practice video:

Retry: Intro. to CG test movie gif

Yoo-hoo! My currency!