Line art + Watercolor

watercolor plus line art with micron pen combined in Photoshop

An image I recreated in Viscom I

The Best of it All.

Best Thumbnails:

I chose my "car" thumbnails of my sailboat. My original thumbnails weren't as clean cut so i re worked many of them for this portfolio, making them a little tighter and neater. I think the end result is much improved from my original one. 

Best Marker comp:

I chose this parakeet comp to be my best marker comp because it really demonstrates a drawing aspect of the marker comps more than the text. This is something I really struggle with, but with working with the project I really concentrated and was able to pull out a very decent comp. Professor Nelson had me fix a few things on this certain piece and I think it made a big difference!

Best Copyfitting:

This is the fishing magazine spread marker comp with copy fitting. I spent a lot of time on this one. It looks pretty close to my final production. The copyfitting was hard to figure out at first. (All that math!!) But i eventually got the hang of it. This turned out really well.

Marceline Pamphlet:

This project was really fun for two reasons. One: It's Disney. and two: It's sort of like a magazine spread.  This was easily the most difficult project of the semester. Cramming all that text in an organized fashion was miserable BUT I LOVED creating the graphics from scratch and piecing all of the work together.  It was really cool to make something for something that is actually real, and to learn about something as well.  I really enjoyed this project and I am proud of my final design. 

Best Design:

I chose my fishing comp for best design because I really like how i utilized the sunset photograph in the background and placing the fish on top of the text boxes. It really creates a Three-dimensional feel.  I also really like the hook in the W of Clear Water. It adds a sense of movement along with the fish. I really like magazine spreads abiove all else thus far. Now that I really understand WHAT I am doing to certain images and WHY I am doing it, the process has become much easier when it comes to design because I can focus more of my time and attention on that. 

Best Typography:

I chose this piece for best typography because I feel like the text I chose really seems nautical. It feels uniform with the boat and scenery. I think it is really important to find typography that goes with the topic of point of your design. I am really excited to take typography and learn more about this and the history of it so I will be able to understand or choose typography.  I also like the typography I used in the Big Creek Marina logo in the bottom right corner.  Overall, I feel like this was a pretty successful piece.

Best Creative Concept:

I really fixed up this poster from the original. The original called for 1 color, no bleed. I though I would make it a little more interesting using the techniques i've learned throughout the year. I really like the final production because it is my own design. A lot of the work we did at the beginning of the year didn't allow for much creative, so second semester it was really fun and hard to brainstorm up ideas that would be unusual and do-able.  I chose this piece for my most creative because I spend a lot of time coming up with unique ideas. The Marceline project was my second choice, but so much of that project, like the text and the map are already given to us. This assignment had less guidelines so I was able to show my style a little more.

Let's start from the beginning of the semester with the best examples from illustrator, photoshop, and indesign. 

First off, indesign.

Indesign is easily my favorite program out of the three. It seems really practical to me. I do like using the pen tool and such in illustrator but overall this program really seems to do it for me. I LOVED this project more than any other this year. It really got my brain thinking about WHAT i want to do with my visual communications major. After tackling this project, and the fishing magazine spread,I'm almost convinced I want to work for some magazine and make spreads. I really find it enjoyable. I guess that all will depend on the pay and letting go of my dream of working at DreamWorks. We'll see. This assignment was awesome. I wish I had a copy of the original layout to post on here. They're identical. :D

Next up, illustrator. 

Here is my sailboat, known as Ms. Richmond to the family. Creative, huh? I am extremely proud of this particular piece of work, probably due to the tremendous amount of hours spent with my eyes fixed on the Mac. In the end, it was well worth it. I really created something that gave me a lot of confidence. It was sweet to design something that I really care about looking good, it gave me the determination and motivation to sit in the Beta lab for endless amounts of hours. And because of this I learned that I really do have the skills and patience to do what I want to do, I just have to stay focused!

Lastly, photoshop.

Here is the photoshop project of four combined images. Woo! I used a regular glossy photo (the colored one of the four girls), a black and white glossy of a covered bridge, a magazine image from Cosmo, and a ink drawing of a sailboat. This project was where I met my enemy. AKA photoshop. I learned A LOT from this project. After reading the textbook and slowly but surely learning how to use certain tools for certain things, I started to have fun with this assignment. I really like the opacity tool. I used this quite  bit in this piece as you can see in the four girls the covered bridge shadows through onto their skin. I really liked the variance between the four images. This was definitely  a challenge for me, but useful.

Car Comp-ups

These are my 10 thumbnails of my 'car comps', or specifically for me, boat comps. I really don't like one individual thumbnail more than any other. As a group, Rebekah, Daniela, and i decided to take different aspects from different thumbnails to combined them into one piece. for example, the boat from #1 is the best boat. i want to use that and incorporate it with the dock from #7, using the color scheme from #8. I think this will make the best poster. I will have to do a few more marker comps to make sure that these things works together, but the end result will be great.

Helvetica

I thought the movie on Helvetica was really interesting. I learned a lot about how typography is made, and all the steps it has to go through. I never really thought about such a simple font having so much history. As the video said, Helvetica is one of those fonts that has just become sort of a standard. People would never say something like, "look that helvetica!" At least not any more. I understand why the font was such a huge hit. It really does have a sort of command feeling, but also a feeling of warmth. It isn't too harsh, and it isn't too soft. I also think that now, font has more expectations and needs to evolve to "the fifth square" in a lot of instances.

Rebekah Gates Chili Thumbnail

Rebekah Gates Chili Thumbnail:

Concept: I like the simplicity of this design. I think it could look really sharp on the computer. I think the chili bowl really would draw in someone who didn't know what the poster was about.

Design Elements: I like the bowl, like I said, and the little half moon in the corner gives it a nice touch. There are a bunch of things I like from some of your other thumbnails, that could possibly be incorporated into one thumbnail. Such as on the sheet with 6 designs, the top middle one. I Really like the "chili" logo. I also like the "c" that is a chili bowl. The boy holding a bowl of chili is also really fun. 

Structure: The proportions of the bowl in comparison to the typography work out really nice. The header "chili" is smaller than I would normally expect, but I think it works well with the over thumbnail. If it was any bigger I think it would take away from the graphic.

Midterm Portfolio

|INDESIGN|

The magazine redo was my favorite assignment thus far in this class. It really made me think about becoming a magazine layout artist. I loved messing with the different shapes, sizes, and especially the text. I think I will thoroughly enjoy taking Typography. I really got the hang out it and went to work. I really liked working with the girly magazine as well. I have tended to like the projects where we get to pick the material or base images and things for the projects instead of the ones where, at the end, our project will look like everyone else's. Which is probably why some of my favorites were this one, the car,and the photoshop 4 images. I really learned a lot about indesign doing this project. This was the first Indesign project where we had to recreate something exactly as it was, which forced me to explore more of the tools and options within the program.

|PHOTOSHOP|

I really love this picture because each of the four elements is personal, or really makes me...happy. Fist of all, the picture of my 

friends I is obviously personal. I love how in that one picture all of our personalities are captured so well. Starting from the left with me, anyone who knows me, knows that I am constantly laughing and having fun. Next is Kirsten, who THINKS she cool and "gangsta" is throwin' up the peace sign. Next to her, Chantelle would be doing an over exaggerated expression, due to all those years in cheerleading. Lastly, Erin, who is extremely calm, cool and collected is looking at us like we are all insane. The next picture, is the sailboat line drawing. This is personal as well, because sailing and being on the lake is a HUGE part of my life and probably one of the most exhilarating and relaxing things I've done. I chose the bridge photo because I recently read a book called "The Bridges of Madison County" that really grabbed a hold of me. The last picture, of the graffiti, was taken from a Cosmopolitan magazine. I think it brings out the liveliness of the photo of my friends and I, as well as bringing together the entire piece. I also really like how the colors work together. I remember this was the first assignment in Phot

oshop, and when I completed it, I felt so accomplished.

The indie poster was fun to work with because of the cool fonts and the laid back atmosphere of the overall project. I liked the

 audience that the poster was directed toward, so it made the overall project a lot of fun. I also think that this project probably taught me the most for photoshop because I learne

d a lot about clipping paths, paths, and file formats. 

|ILLUSTRATOR|

This is one of my favorite pieces from Illustrator, mainly because I really tried to jazz it up and personalize it with what I know about art, mixed with what I thought looked good. I used a lot of effects and different techniques that I learned from in class and from the book, along with tools i just bumped into a long the way. I also really like how I know this particular project won't look like anyone else's, mostly because I didn't make mine look identical to the original. The colors really work well together and I think that it really creates the cultural mood and setting that the original piece was making.

  

The project was really fun for me. Again, I got to use my sailboat which was really fun. I was really glad that I got to be unique and not do the norm with the car. There are a lot of little pieces on this sailboat that took a lot of time. For example: All the ropes. It really tested my patience as well as my skills in Illustrator. I'm definitely more comfortable with the program after this assignment. I really like how one can tell that this is not just a sailboat, but it is MY sailboat from home. I put a lot of details in, and my family was way impressed. I also really liked being able to mount it and hang it in the hall of OP so I could display my work. It really made all that time and effort worth it.