The semester is over!

The semester officially ended for me today. Boy has this semester been the most rigorous and demanding one that I have had yet at MxCC, but I pushed on with great determination and feel that I have grown even more with the closing of this semester. I am thankful for all the challenging tasks that my professors would assign to us each week, and I am very happy with how well I was able to accomplish those tasks, as well as how immensely my portfolio has grown.

As promised I will post the 8 different projects that I had been working on since December 7th. Here we goooooooo!

Animation

The first project that I had to complete before I could even start working on my final animation portfolio was Creative Project #10 - Final Animation. We were tasked with making a final animation using any of the animation techniques that we learned and used over the semester. At first I had originally wanted to bring back Milo the Fly who would have been freezing in his little house (wanted it to reflect it being December). He would then check his mail and see a flyer for an all inclusive resort at a posh stable. I always talk with my boyfriend about my ideas for each project because he will tell me "Yah that sounds great!" or "That seems real complicated for the time that you have. Maybe you should do something else that won't push your stress levels through the roof." When he heard how much time I had, on top of how many other projects I needed to work on nearly simultaneously as this one, he told me Milo was not a good job, and Jamie was right in saying this to me. So I asked my professor if we could take a previous animation we made and further embelish the story, and he said "Of course!"; so I looked through my assignments folder to see what animation I would want to work on more and I decided to go with the "Link dreaming of Mario land" animation as I felt that the ending of Link going down the pipe warranted a further explanation of what happened while he was down there.

I made it through flash and then exported image sequences and imported them into photoshop. I then made 4 separate photoshop documents for the opening scene, the dream scene, the underworld scene, and the final scene and exported them out as mp4's. I then brought those mp4's into a new photoshop document and added title and end credits, along with all the audio. So here it is in all its glory:

Now that my Creative Project #10 was completed, I could finally move on to stitching together my animation portfolio. We were tasked with making a final portfolio that contained all of our finished animation pieces. He did not give us a time limit, so mine has a total time of 10:56. Obviously I need to widdle this down for my resume, but I feel that the length is good as the final portfolio for that class. Here is the video of the portfolio:

Digital Imaging

Now we move on to my Digital Imaging class projects. Like animation, I had 2 projects that I needed to complete for this class: Creative Project #11 and the final portfolio. CP#11 had to be a portfolio title screen that contained our name, the name of the of portfolio and any contact information. We actually had to make 2 separate title screens and choose what one we will use for the portfolio. Here are the 2 separate title screens that I made (I ended up going with the 2nd image).

With the title screens done, I could now begin the process of picking out what images from the assignemtns over the semester that I wanted to be showcased in my portfolio. I ended up choosing 10 images that I felt had the most 'umph' to them. I brought them into photoshop as jpegs and made an image sequence animation with crossfades between the images, and added the final fantasy prelude song because I am a BIG final fantasy fan and because I felt the music really added to the portfolio as the images faded in and on out the screen. Here is the finished piece:

Digital Page Design

Onward to our next stop in project land: Final magazine spread for Digital Page Design.

So over the past 5 weeks, we have slowly been gathering assets and coming up with drafts for this final project in page design. The past 2 weeks have been us completing our 1st and 2nd set of proofs, which we would bring into class for her and our fellow classmates to see and critique. Not only did we have to make a magazine spread, but we also had to include 3 tabbed pieces in our final project. Tabbed pieces could be a table of contents, a calendar, a table or a coupon. Here is my final piece with the 3 required tabbed pieces in it. As a side note: all the photos (minus the scarves) in this project were taken by me from SCA events that I do event photography at.

Digital Page Design Final

Digital Page Design Final

Digital Page Design Final

Graphic Design

To the next project!

For my graphic design class we also had to hand in two assignments. This is due to last Tuesday being a reading day at the college and no classes were held. So for the first assignment that I had to do was to illustrate the number 11. We were shown a few examples of illustrated 11's to get our creative juices flowing. I started sketching out different ideas I had immediately and I was wanting to illustrate two musketeers holding up their rapiers, but Jamie said that the rapiers would be too thin for people to see them as a number 11. He then suggested doing the two towers from Lord of the Rings – Orthanc and Barad-dur. I exclaimed "Oh my god YES!!" and started sketching up what I saw in my head and had Jamie look it over to make sure it didn't look weird. Once he approved it, I decided that I wanted to do a digital painting of it in photoshop as it would make it easier to fix if I made a mistake versus if I did the project in a fine art medium. Again I was running into having so many projects to do in such a constrained time that this would be the easiest way to complete the project. So here is the final piece:

*if you look closely at the top of Orthanc, you will see a tiny Saruman

The next graphic design assignment that I had to complete was our final project – illustrated alphabet.

We were tasked with finding a suitable font, preferrably a big thick font that we could either illustrate the entire inside, or the entire outside of the letter. I did some looking around for fonts that really caught my eye and I decided on a font called Cinzel Decorative Black. I really liked how the font curved in certain places. With my font chosen, I now needed to decide what the heck I was going to illustrate. I made a whole list of ideas that came to my mind as I started at the font for a while. It ranged from snails to moss and mushrooms growing on decaying wood to seascapes, but deep in my heart I wanted to stay with my medieval theme, because that is who I am and what I love. I noticed in my list that I had written down "serpents", "dragons", "chinese dragons" a few times because the font made me feel something should be slithering or entwining itself on the letters. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks – viking knotwork! I told Jamie my idea, and being a blacksmith and working a lot with celtic/viking knotwork in his metalwork, he suggested that I look up viking churches on the internet, and lo and behold I find reference images that display the type of viking knotwork I was thinking of.

The style of knotwork that I wanted to do was the Urnes style of knotwork, dating to the 12th century period. I find it so moving and breathtaking how the lines entwine so gorgeously together, and how the lines go from thick to thin in such a gracefully delicate way. The most mind blowing thing about this art is that it was done in the 12th century, where they did not have the type of modern tools that we have in this day and age. I was in total awe as I went through the images of the viking churches and couldn't stop saying how gorgeous they were.

Anyways, I digress, after seeing those images I was inspired to draw entwined serpents on each of my letter and knew that I wanted to do this piece with a fine art medium. I enjoyed doing pen and ink on my unicorn drawing so I decided to repeat that technique again with this project. I really wanted to convey the feeling that the serpents were a high relief on a stone background and felt that stippling would capture that feeling perfectly. I present to you the finished piece:

Digital Cinematography

Last, but certainly not least, is my final project for Digital Cinematography. We came up with a list of different scenes that we had screened throughtout the semester, and from there we further whittled it down to 3. And those 3 are:

• American Psycho - axe murdering scene

• No Country for Old Men - hotel scene

• Rushmore - opening scene

I wanted a challenge and put my name in for the American Psycho scene and ended up on a team with three other classmates. Now it was time for us to start filming the scene. Now it was time to gather prop. I went out and bought a bunch of muslin fabric (which I also intend to use for patterning pieces for my sewing hobby) to replicate the white fabric that is placed on all the furniture in the scene, found an old pill bottle that I made up a label for, I put some apple cider in a glass bottle, as well as glass tumbler so it would like the actor who was playing Paul Allen was nursing an alcoholic drink, and Jamie let me borrow the forge's axe for the infamous murder scene.

Over these last two Fridays we went upstairs to the conference room to film our scene, and boy was it a lot of work for just 4 people. It really makes me appreciate all of the people that are needed for such an endeavour, not job is too little and if someone is not there to do it then it puts a hitch in the whole flow of the production. We were the director, the DP, the grip crew and the camera crew, and on top of that I also had to edit the scene as well as draw up a storyboard and write up a shotlist, on top of all the other projects that I had to work on; but we persevered through it all and came out on the other side standing tall and proud of what we accomplished in those two days of filming.

I unfortunately cannot upload the video as of yet because I have reached my upload limit on vimeo; but once Sunday comes I will be able to upload it for you all to see it. It really as a lot of fun to film, but especially to edit. I have come to realize that is my favorite process of the film world and I cannot wait to learn how to use Adobe After Effects to make any videos I film even more visually appealing.

So there you have it folks! For the past week I have been sitting at my drafting table hunched over my laptop or drawing pad for about 12 hours every day, having to deal with stiff fingers from drawing for too long of a period to kitties trying to force their ways into my lap for cuddles and then knocking all the small things off my desk when I deny them those cuddles. Having to deal with many sleepless or very fitful nights of rest due to my brain not wanting to shutdown to near meltdowns when flash decides to crash on me after spending hours on getting an animated sequence just right.

The trials and tribulates that I have gone through this semester have taught me how handle time constraints and deadlines even better than I have had in the past. I am proud of myself for not giving up. That when the times got rough I took a deep breath, rolled up my sleeves and continued on with determination to see it through to the end, and the results, as well as the feedback to the results, have been amazing. I say again how happy I am to have chosen this path – to persure my dream of the arts. I am constantly learning new things all the time from my classmates, as well as being inspiried by them.

I love my life and I love that I am happy with my decision, and hearing from people that they love seeing my posts and seeing the pictures of my artwork inspires me even more to continue down this path, because I want to be the bridge that connects a person to their dream and make it a reality––whether with a photo with my photography skills, a logo with my graphic design skils, a painting with my fine art skills, or a series of webisodes with my cinematography skills. I enjoy creating, and I want to create for others.