Outside Work #8: Renaissance Faire Poster

For our final project in my Digital Media class, we were assigned to design a poster for the Alabama Renaissance Faire. Obviously, it should be in keeping with a Middle-Ages type of design. If I like it well enough, I can submit it to the actual committee for a contest. If it is chosen to be used the prize is $500! Here's hoping. Of course, it could probably use some edits.

Outside Work #7: Pointillism

For the third project in my 2D design class, we were supposed to pick a theme and create 6 images with pointillism that were supposed to emphasize texture. I chose the theme of wings.

This took forever and I didn't actually do it correctly, however. The only one that actually looks textured is the hummingbird wing on the bottom right, and that was the last one I did in a very rushed way. The others are too flat and don't look realistic.

Outside Work #6: Shape Study

The second assignment in my 2D design class was to focus on shapes and create two designs out of cut black paper. One of the designs was to be based on positive space, and the other based on negative space.

For my first one, I used my trip to China as inspiration. Specifically the weekend when we went to Taishan, or Mount Tai. It's one of China's tallest mountains and also one of the five spiritual mountains of Buddhism. I represented the mountain and it's shadow, as well as the 12 dragon pillars at the base and the temple at the peak.

The second design focuses on my education and how it began in one place and was centralized in one community as my knowledge grew through the grades, until graduation and beginning college where the path of education becomes specific and branches off in multiple directions.

Outside Work #5: Line Study

In my 2D design class, the first project was to make four 5in x 5in squares with different designs comprised of types of lines. The squares were supposed to be one with straight lines, one with diagonal lines, one with curved lines, and the last as a combination of all three. It took an incredibly long time, because the we were supposed to make 20 preliminary designs for each type of line. I didn't manage to get all of those done, but these final designs worked out quite well. My favorite is definitely the all curved lines one.

Outside Work #4: Mixed Self-Portrait

Our fourth assignment was to combine at least 3 photos of ourselves into one image. I had quite a bit of trouble coming up with something good enough, as I'm certainly not the kind of guy deserving of being used in artwork. Plus, doing so made me feel incredibly vain...

Still yet, I used these four pictures from my trip to China and managed to come up with this.

It's nowhere near as convincing as the last one. The proportions, perspective, and lighting are actually way off, but it's good enough.

Outside Work #3: PhotoShop Scene

With our third project in the Digital Media class, we were supposed to create a scene by putting together multiple different images. The idea was to have one object in scale with the scene, one significantly out of scale, and one hidden in plain sight.

I began with the above image. I added the boat and it's shadow, the lamp and it's reflection, a small silhouette of the Statue of Liberty on the horizon, a sea monster to the right of the boat, and I even flipped the sky to lower the sun's position. I tried to change the lighting on objects so that it looks as though the light is actually coming from the lamp. I think I did a pretty good job.

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Outside Work #2: Wander

Yet another project from my Digital Media class, the assignment for this was very similar to the first one. We were to again draw a scene of some kind, scan it, and add color in PhotoShop. However, this time all the color had to be a high resolution texture, and at least two of the textures must be scanned personally instead of simply downloaded.

I decided to draw a picture of the main character from my favorite video game of all time. Wander from Shadow of the Colossus.

Again, after extensive editing and scanning in some moss and the foil inside of a Rice Krispie Treat wrapper, I managed to come up with this.

The grassy hill is made with the scan of the moss, his sword is the foil, and everything else was downloaded from the internet and colored with overlay effects. The sky was made by simply inverting the colors of a picture of bunched up red silk which turned out to be the perfect sky colors. Again, I'm really proud of this one. It's not a precise representation of the character, but it's definitely recognizable.

Outside Work #1: Lighthouse at Night

Other than the projects for my 3D design class, I've had a number of other projects occupying my time. Most of these will be from my Digital Media class where we are learning how to use the program PhotoShop, but others will be from my 2D design class.

In this project, the assignment was to draw line art of a scene, scan it, and then color in with PhotoShop. This is the scene that I drew up in regular pencil.

After quite a bit of work, I managed to color it like this. I'm relatively proud of the outcome.

Objectification

Our final project was to create a performance art piece based on an object and how we could react or respond to it. It was to be either performed live in front of the class or in the form of a 5-8 minute long video. As you can imagine, all three groups chose to do a video to avoid the pressure of a live performance.

My group - Joyce Eccleston, Briana Knight, and I - had significant trouble coming up with a concept for our video. Eventually we decided to focus on the elements of romantic relationships and use flowers to represent the human nature present in them, as flowers are generally seen as symbols for love and affection, but also symbolize nature.

We took two separate evenings to film in a picturesque setting with a creek and field of flowers with the sun beginning to set behind the trees. This gave the video the look of a typical movie date where everything is perfect, which is essentially the effect we were going for. We did have some mishaps with battery power, so some parts are noticeably lower quality, as well as a problem with balancing in the creek, but that added an element of playfulness that we decided was a perfect addition to the video, despite getting a little wet.

 

The evolution of a relationship is a beautiful, intimate thing. The process of two entirely separate entities, existing in their own world and feeling isolated things, combining to become one functional body is extraordinary. There are layers of chemistry, compatibility, and sheer mystery that go into the process of joining people. Balance plays a key role in maintaining healthy relationships. One must feel as much love and support as they exude. The gender role typically given to depict a healthy relationship is the masculine figure supports while the feminine figure nurtures; however, the worth of a relationship cannot be gauged by something as simple as a social norm. A natural balance of the give and take of these characteristics can help people build a solid foundation. This piece is about the physical simplicity and pure, hidden bond and balance that pulls two beings together.

De-emphasizing the Corner

Our sixth project was called De-emphasizing the Corner, and it required us to build a diagonal half cube and adorn the two sides that would show and the right triangle top with a layered design intended to draw attention from the corner created by all 3 sides meeting.

Yet again, I struggled to find or create a good design in my mind and was grasping at straws for designs. I wish I hadn't used the Companion Cube earlier in the course, because it would have been perfect for this. I had eventually settled for a strange box from the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but it proved to be too problematic getting a good screenshot from which to work.

I then for some reason thought of clockwork. All the interlocking gears working together flawlessly even on multiple layers. It was perfect, and I was determined to make it so that the gears would move with each other, So I set out finding some pictures to use on the internet, and I found a picture with a few good gears. However, I edited them and created some more variety as well, by twisting the arms of some of them. I set them up in PhotoShop on two separate layers so that I could print the gray separately from the black. I tried to set them up as mechanically sound as I could manage and also made a triangular top in this same fashion. From just looking at the gears, I could tell that they would all move if I turned just one crank that would be on the small black gear in the bottom right of the image. That gear and the grey one behind it would be the only gears connected to each other by glue.

Once I had it all mapped and printed out, I began tracing the gears onto a sheet of foam board that was left over from the "Window to the Soul" project. I also built the main half cube in the same way as I did in that project.

With all of the gears traced, I began carefully cutting them out. To be honest, it wasn't all that difficult. I simply stabbed downward into the lines and let the angle of the blade do the cutting for me. The only problem I had with it was that it took a very long time as I had to cut out 34 gears in total of varying sizes and shapes. The worst part was that I had to sit in the floor for the whole time because the foam board was too large to fit on my desk (even if it was cleaned off.), so I had to get up and stretch ever once in a while. My legs were killing me afterward... from sitting!

 I finally got all of one side cut out and began putting them together to test out how well they worked. They looked fantastic, but some of the small gears wouldn't cooperate with the large ones, and kept getting snagged on each other, so unfortunately I had to scrap the idea of making them all move and settle for the knowledge that it would have worked if it weren't for those meddling small gears. However, I suspected that there was a possibility of such a thing happening, so I carried on with the design, because I still think it looked cool. I finished cutting out the rest of the gears and retired for the night.

The next morning I began setting them up on the base with straight pins as their axles to keep them in place. I messed around with them still trying to make them work at this point, but there was nothing short of making new gears that could be done. 

I simply glued them in place as it shows them in the PhotoShop mockup and made adjustments so that they would grip the gears from the other sides better. It took me about 2 days total of working; half a day to design it, a full day of cutting out gears (seriously, it took forever) and actually only about a couple hours to glue the gears down into the final product. I must say, I'm pretty proud of it.

Wunderkammer

Our sixth project is entitled "Wunderkammer" which translates from German to Wonder room, or Curiosity Cabinet. It is meant as a way to display a collection, and in keeping with the trend of past projects I had no idea what to do, because I don't really collect anything. I thought about displaying video games and game related stuff, but that just didn't seem good enough to me. Eventually, I realized that I do actually have a bit of a collection of Coheed and Cambria memorabilia.

Once I knew what I was going to put in it, I had to find something to put it in. I looked all over for a suitable cabinet, going to thrift shops, and furniture stores to no avail. I eventually just went to Hobby Lobby to see if I could find anything there and I found the shadow boxes in the framing area. These are basically frames for three dimensional objects and would work perfectly.

I have every album Coheed and Cambria have released, with their first on both CD and limited edition vinyl repressing, and their second signed by the band. Their fifth album deluxe edition came with a book entitled Year of the Black Rainbow that tells the first chapter of the science fiction story that the lead singer writes, called The Amory Wars. I also have a book that contains all issues of the comic form of the second chapter of The Amory Wars. On top of that, I have the Black Card from pre-ordering the fifth album deluxe edition that allowed me early access to concert venues for a year, and a Fan VIP Pass from the limited edition repressing of their first album.

As much as I already have, this is definitely still a growing collection, because if they release it, I'm going to buy it. There will be comic forms of every chapter of the story, as well as novelizations of them, and they will definitely be on my shelf.

Some might call it an obsession.

Wire Drawing

Our fifth project was to create a drawing out of mostly wire. Other objects could be used, but the focus was supposed to be on wire. We went to a scrap yard to find old wire and other objects to use, but at that time I had no idea what I was going to do. This was actually one of the most difficult projects for me to design. I was completely at a loss up until two days from it being due! Then I decided to look through my old sketches to get inspiration. When I saw this design, it kind of clicked what to do.

I made some changes to the design, such as making the spheres be crumpled balls of copper wire, and the octagon would have grey-ish silver wire wrapped all the way around it through the hole in the center.

I had to figure out a way to make the frame of the octagon sturdy enough to support the weight of the wire and toyed with a number of ideas before deciding that I would just have to cut two planes out of plywood and separate them with dowel rods. I looked up a geometric way to draw out perfect octagons and drew two concentric ones on a sheet of plywood. To make cutting them out faster, I clamped another sheet to this one and made both cuts at the same time.

I was left with this after a couple hours of my first time using both a circular saw and jigsaw. It was a pretty unpleasant experience because saw dust kept getting behind my safety glasses. Some safety glass, right? Fortunately, though, I managed to cut them out quite well if I may say so. I then drilled holes for the dowel rod spacers that I was going to put in.

With the spacers in place the whole thing was beginning to come together. It stood up just as I wanted it to, so now all that was left was to wrap it in wire...

I vastly underestimated the amount of time and effort it would be to wrap that much wire around this type of structure. I had bought a quarter-mile of electric fence wire and fully planned to use it all, but my arms gave out about half way through the roll. It took me at the very least 4-5 hours to go from bare wood to the picture on the bottom right.

Unfortunately, as you can see, the wire isn't wrapped densely enough to completely cover the wood like I had hoped, but as I said, my arms were done. I then began working with the copper wire to make the crumpled balls of wire. I had a few different shades of the copper and made the string through the opening sort of gradate from very shiny bright copper on the ends to a dull, corroded kind in the center.

I made yet another mistake with my design planning at this point, as the wire spheres were also nowhere near as dense as I wanted them to be. Also, whereas in the design they were meant to arch through the center of the octagon, in the final product they merely laid through it with out support. However, it was already approaching 5 am and I had to make do. I ended up skipping my first class to sleep.

Here's a picture of the final product. I am definitely displeased with it, but that's what I get for inadvertently waiting so long to get started.