This blew my mind...

my friend recently showed me the logo of fedex, and he told me there was a arrow hidden in the logo. I spent a few minutes searching, and then he finally pointed it out like i was an idiot and it literally blew my mind...

i hope you enjoy the same experience

some finished products

Comic #3

Comic #2

Comic #1

so over the last couple of weeks i've been concentrating on finishing 3 main ideas i have and here is what i have to far.

comic #1 so far...

So i taken my first idea that was on paper, scanned it, cleaned up the lines in photoshop, and addd color. My next step is to add text. I think i will do most of this using illustrator so i can manipulate the text easier. I hopefully will have the whole page up by this weekend.

comic ideas

"Fish" my character

So i have decided to use the fish from the Dr. Seuss book "The Cat and The Hat." I've done a few drawings and comics with him on paper. I just recently started to draw him on the computer where i will do most of my final work. here are a few promos i have of the "Fish."

my comic? what comic?

Over the last couple of days I have just been kind of brainstorming on ideas I want my comic to be about. Like what characters I want, the scenery, and the storyline. On Friday I decided that I wanted to do a comic about the goldfish, and the character I am Sam from Dr. Seuss. I think that they basic storyline will be them living in an apartment together trying to get through normal day challenges.

Recently I have been practicing my drawing on the characters with different facial expressions, gestures, and body language. Once I feel comfortable being able to draw those I’ll move on to the scenery they will be engaging in. I defiantly like to work on a large workspace where I can spread everything out and listen to music. Things that distract me can be just about anything. I can usually stay focused on something for quite a while, but my concentration can be broken easily with a text message or my roommates or facebook. I kind of like to have my concentration broken up though because if I’m too focused on something I can get frustrated pretty fast and then I just want to give up.

I think to be able to complete this comic I need to stay focused on checkpoints like finish these panels by a certain time, and keep the storyline moving so I don’t get bored. I really enjoy what I’m doing in this class so it gives me that extra push to keep trying.

Marvel: The Road to Civil War

I haven’t really read too many comic books in my time, mainly just the newspaper and a few pages out of a book. One comic that really caught my eye was one of the Marvel comics called “The Road to Civil War.” I liked how all the panels are usually not consistent on every page. For example, some might be a long panoramic panel, others just normal rectangles, and some are long skinny portrait panels. I also enjoyed the use of the “white space,” through out the comic. Sometimes they used black “white space,” when it was a night or dark scene. It really gave me a sense of being there. I thought that the use of their text was really effective as well. When Iron man would speak he had a red hue, analog robot like text. And the others used just a normal shorthand serif like text. I noticed that on occasions that the text would turn italic to show a little more emphasis when someone was speaking. I think that seeing some of these techniques will really help me with my ideas in designing my own comic.

Something New

Something that I picked up on the other day in class when I was looking through comic books and pictures books is how simple yet effective Dr. Seuss’ illustrations are. I like how his imagination allows him to create all of these wonderful worlds and creatures, but its still tied down to the world we live in. Take for instance the fish from “The Cat in The Hat,” I’ve never seen a fish like that in my life, but to kids that see the book for the first time they don’t see anything wrong with it. It’s a simple illustration that fits the description he is trying to portray.

My Artistic Father

One of my artistic fathers would probably be Vincent Van Gogh. I really enjoy how he takes little brush strokes and creates masterpieces out of them. It almost seems like he does abstract painting but he creates very realistic artwork. I want to focus my artwork in that way, take sometime fairly simple and create something magnificent out of it.

Bonsai sushi resturant... a place new to me

I was never really a fan of Asian cuisine growing up as a kid. It was only a few years ago that I really started to develop a taste for it. I experimented first with Panda Express and found it to be amazing and much more than I expected! I think a lot of it was the fact that it was Asian food, made by Americans. But nonetheless it was Asian and I was ready for new adventures in this style of food.

The other day my roommate was telling me about this sushi bar called Bonsai down the street. He kept saying, “dude you have to come and try it!” Me being the sheltered American I am replied with, “Hell no!” Some how he talked me into going and trying it out. We got there and I was surprised to see how clean and well kept the restaurant was. There was a bar in front of the sushi chef, and booths for families to sit down for a meal. Immediately I looked at my friend with that sad puppy look hoping he would have the heart to say we could go. Instead he just said, “Dinner for two please.”

So we sat down at a booth and the waiter gave us some menus. Right away I looked for the most generic Asian dish they had available. That’s when I saw it, a number one, grilled teriyaki chicken. I was in the clear! But of course knowing my roommate, the sly dog he is, he ordered a plate of California rolls. Obviously I was thinking they were for him, I mean how big could a plate be right?

So I got my teriyaki chicken first and just devoured it as fast as I could trying to get full so we could leave. And just as I was about to take my last bite, the waiter brought over the plate of California rolls. I kind of laughed at the sight of all of the rolls that were on the plate thinking, there is no way he can finish all of that, we’ll be out of here in no time! That’s when he did it; he grabbed his chopsticks, and shoveled about 4 rolls onto my plate. I cant tell you what my expression looked like, but I could guess it was like telling a 7 year old girl she has to go pick up dog poop.

He started eating his rolls like they were candy. One after the other, like a vacuum sucking up dust. When he was completely finished and he looked at my plate with disgust and told me, “come on, just one, I bought those for you.” Damn, he used the guilt trip on me. Now I had to try, there was no way of getting out of it. So I grabbed my chopsticks, situated the roll so that if I moved it just a little it would go flying on the floor and I wouldn’t have to eat it. I started raising it to my mouth; thinking, ok just one and then we can go. I put it in my mouth and placed it on my tongue, and the taste almost startled me, I wasn’t expecting that flavor. Started chewing, feeling all the mixtures of who knows what was inside and swallowed it. Of course my roommate used the usual reply, “see it wasn’t that bad!” And you know, it really wasn’t! I finished all four rolls he put on my plate. I liked so much in fact were going back every Friday night.

Art Department Website

I thought the website was very clean and well put together. It's simple and to the point. The only thing i feel it could use is maybe some pictures of people in the art department. It should show what it's really about, exploring with different types of art. 

Book Assignment

For this assignment, we were to create a book using InDesign. I decided to mix my love of snowboarding with photography and came up with a book to tribute Mt. Ashland. I went to Mt.Ashland and took some shots of people just enjoying the mountain in their backyard. I then used minor editing with photoshop, and then imported them into InDesign. I tried different placements of the pictures to get different feels of the overall page. I stuck with the same color scheme to have a sense of consistency with my book. I really didn't have a specific idea to the decision of my pictures, i just kind of went with what looked good. 

I really enjoyed doing this assignment. I like that i showed me a lot more to editing than justphotoshop. Using InDesign was challenging to start with but i found it to be much easier that i thought.

Table of Contents

For this assignment we were to replicate an image of a table of contents using InDesign. This was the first time i have used InDesign, and found myself pretty happy with the overall outcome of the assignment. I used multiple text boxes to create the page numbers boxes, and the text itself. I picked out a few pictures that resembled some of the pictures used in the original. I edited them using Photoshop buy changing them to black and white and altering the lighting.

I am very excited to start the final project by creating a book with InDesign and i hope to use this program more in the future.

Movie Poster

When Godzilla comes ripping through Tokyo Japan, who will the citizens turn to? Only the greatest duo known to man,  Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. This actioned packed thriller will have you at the edge of your seat from start to finish. Coming to a theater near you this summer

You wont find this lizard at your pet store.

Collage/Photo Montage

This is a collage of the band the Foo Fighters. This is my all time favorite band. With they're riffs, bridges and lyrics their sound is truly individual and really stands out. When i first saw the objective for this assignment i knew exactly what i wanted to do for this project. I took the majority of the photos from google, and a few from their myspace. Overall i used about 93 layers consisting of the pictures, texts, and shadowing effects. I really enjoyed doing this project from start to finish. I had an idea in my head of what it would look like and when i was finished it was better than i had imagine it would be.

Picturing the "other"

This is Kirk Albachten. He is a senior at North Medford High School. I met him through myspace when he asked if i could shoot him for his senior pictures. He really liked some of the stuff that was on my profile so he wanted me to be his photographer. Kirk is really into playing the trumpet for his high school's wind ensemble and jazz band. I wanted to be able to use some of that talent of his in his pictures. I thought over all the shoot went great and i learned alot about him just through taking pictures.

Alphabet Soup

This image reprsents the letter "O." I really enjoyed working with this picture. I found that the possiblites could be endless, just like the shape of the letter O. I cropped out the hands of my friend and put it behind a space background, that i found on the internet, then added an image of the earth that i found of the internet as well. When i was looking at the picture with all the layers in place, the earth looked a little awkward because of the shadowing with the hands. I then just took a soft edge brush and darkened the outlining areas to make it look more realistic.

I am very proud of this picture, i found that photoshop is a very powerful tool and the possibilities are endless with it.

This picture is of a coat hanger in a bathroom. To me it resembled the letter J. I cropped out the hanger and used it as a top layer while i used the gradient tool with a rainbow effect. I thought that the rainbow effect would add a nice contrast to it since the hanger is silver. 

This image is of a lock that looks like the letter U when turned upside down. This image was a little harder to decide how edit it. I used the contrast and brightness tool and almost maxed out the contrast. i thought that it made the image look more striking to the eye. I then made a new layer and cropped out a circle in the middle and darkened the area behind it. This made it seem as if a flash light was focused on it. 

I really enjoyed how this pictures turned out. I started not having any ideas to creating somthing artistic.

Is picture was of the tile wall in the bathroom with a crack in the sealing. I thought it looked like the letter L. When i shot this image i already new what i wanted to do with it. I thought of a Bob Marley poster my friend has that used red, yellow, green, and black. I thought the colors really flowed yet had a lot of contrast together. I think with this picture i showed exactly how the colors can do just that.

For this image i shot a dresser handle that had a shadow of a C. This was a little hard to edit because the image was pretty blury. I was a little absent minded when doing this picture as well so i just kind of messed around with the gradient tool untill i got something i liked. I then took a soft edge brush and darkened the shadow of the handle to really make it pop.

scratch assignment

This is my first assignment for my Digital Media Class. The idea was to use flat colors to create an image. When i was thinking about what to do for my assignment, i saw a commercial for an Apple  iPod, i was really inspired by the way they used the flat color technique. Using a picture I took of a snowboarder on Mt. Ashland, I cropped him out from the background of the ski run, then cropped out his snowboard and filled in both images with flat black and white. I then later took bright contrasting color and filled in the background to really make the snowboarder stand out. I wasn't very satisfied with just one bright image, so i decided to use multiple bright colors and post them together.