Shazaam!

Yes, this is late, but better late than never?

A few weeks ago, guest artists came to class to help us with our Shazaam projects. The idea was to take pictures of our school, and bring the positive aspects of our school to the outside. By outside, I mean our pieces have been published to a local newspaper.

For mine, I really wanted to bring out all of the creativity of our school so that other people could see what a positive impact it has made on us.

 Much of my design are just mistakes that I liked. That's my favourite part of the design process: when I have an original idea that I am satisfied with, but I make a random error and I fall in love with it. For me it was the paint splatters.

I was playing around in illustrator and mistakenly copied and pasted it into Photoshop on the back wall; it looked almost as if  paint was splattered on the wall. I liked that idea because it gives he idea that with art at my school, we are limitless. Much of the time we are allowed to do almost whatever we want and we are given freedom to communicate our ideas through design.

I wanted to show that by having "knowledge and creativity" crawling through the halls. I did this with the paint splatters and colourful lines; I also represented the different kinds of art and resources we have with pictures of them or symbolizing them.

One thing I would change would be the fonts; it was a very last minute idea, and I feel like they do not match with my design.

Tutorial - The Golden Ratio in Illustrator

Hmmm... I think it's time for a tutorial; I haven't done one of those yet.

*Googles for tutorials*

*FOUND ONE*

Okay, so this is actually a video, but I thought I'd try it out myself too as I'm writing this, so I will upload snapshots of my process.

Here's the tutorial. I actually was unable to post the video on the blog, so I apologize for the inconvenience.

Step one:
Macs: Illustrator Menu > Preferences > Guides & Grids
PC: Edit > Preferences > Guides & Grids

Make sure all of the settings look something like this (The bright green doesn't have to be there, just pay attention to the measurements):





Another thing is to make sure to go View > Snap to Grid and switch it so it's on. (This keeps the ratio of everything the same).


Step two:
Select the rectangle tool, and click one time where two of the main thicker grid lines meet. Here is where you can choose your preferred measurements. The measurements should be 5 x 5, and the lines will follow the main grids.









Step three:

  Once you have your perfect square, click on your ruler at the side, if it isn't showing, View > Show Rulers or ctrl + R. Drag the guide line to the middle of the square.










Step 4:
The next step is to select the ellipse tool, and point your mouse to where the guide and your square meet. Before making the circle, hold option or alt and shift; now drag the circle until the top corners of the square meet the circle. The point of this circle is to determine where and what size the next rectangle is going to be so it fits with the golden ratio.






Step 5:

 The new rectangle is going to be the same height as the previous one; click and drag the rectangle until it reaches the end of the circle. The new rectangle is in proportion with the square by a factor of five (which is, according to the video the golden proportion.)

Also, we don't need the circle anymore; feel free to delete it at this point. (Save your work though!)

Step 6:

 We now have the proper proportions done:) Now, inside of the rectangle you just made, hold down shift and draw a square from the top point of where the two rectangles intercept so that is touches the edges of the rectangle.







Step 7:

 We keep going with the squares...







Step 8:

 This is the last with the squares.








Step 9:

Select the arc tool  and drag your mouse to the bottom left corner of your square; press shift before drawing your arc towards the top right corner of your square. If you drew your ratios properly, it should snap right into place.

Keep going with the arc; you may have to start at different corners.


The end product should look something like this:

I saw this tutorial and was interested because we looked at the golden ratio in art class; I wanted to find out more about it, and I thought that this tutorial would help me to get a better understanding of it, and it did. I now better understand the proportions of the golden ratio, and will try to incorporate it into my pieces now.






Night all!

Garageband Tutorial and Other Happenings

Hello hello,

Happy Friday! Well kind of happy, it's been a long week, especially the past two days. I was also supposed to do this tutorial about a week ago, but me being me I procrastinated, so I'll be doing two posts today. Sound fun? Kay good:)

So this is the tutorial I found, for iMovie. In class we're currently working on a movie trailer project. We have to edit a movie trailer in a way that the mood of the trailer is changed. For example editing a romance so it is perceived as a horror film. I'll write more about it when I post my finished project up.

For now I thought I'd share this tutorial on iMovie that I found. It was actually my first time using iMovie, and thinking back I should have watched a tutorial before starting, as it would have made this project easier. I managed though and now I know the progam quite well.

This is a good video that shows beginners where everything is and the basic ins and outs. I'd reccomend it to anyone who is new to the program and woud like to try it out.

Another Tutorial- Vines and Branches

Happy Sunday! Well I guess that depends on how much work you have to do...

I was looking for something to blog about and found another illustrator tutorial. I thought it was really cool.

I really liked the tutorial because of the curves and twirls in it. In the tutorial I also learned how to make custom brushes and symbols, which is surprisingly simple; all you have to do is make the shape or brush stroke you want, then drag it into the brushes or symbols palette, then adjust the settings for it.

So first you should start off with a curvy line, drawn with the pen tool or the brush or pencil tool (whatever you prefer).


Here is where you make one of the custom brushes. Use the pen tool or the triangle tool to make a shape like this:
For the settings to put for the new brush, go to the tutorial (Step 3).

So now that you have the brush, click on the curve you made and apply the brush.

Next you can apply another branch/vine; make the stroke size smaller (like the varying sizes in my picture below).

Now use the pen tool to make some leaf shapes (like the ones in the picture below), and keep them relatively small. Now drag them into the symbols palette, name the leaves something that makes sense, and make sure you click "graphic" rather than "Movie clip."

For some of the other vines, you have to make another brush; make it look something like this:
Follow the same directions for the first custom brush. On one of the branches, use the pen tool to make a small arc, then apply the brush to it.

Next is the part where you can be creative, just keep making swirls and branches until you're satisfied with what you've got.

I really like my final product, and I'm probably going to use if for things like backgrounds and websites.

In the rest of the tutorial, it switches the image into Photoshop and makes a cool background, check it out if you wanna see:)

I hope that was helpful:)

Swirls in Illuatrator

Hey!

I was looking at tutorials for Adobe Illustrator and stumbled on THIS ONE. I thought it was cool because it looked simple and easy, but still really cool at the same time.

I actually tried to make one myself, but I messed up halfway through, and being the middle of the night, I don't really want to try again... but I took one screen shot of the beginning:

So basically, you start with a shape, i.e. a circle or a square. Then you select it and go to Effect>Distort & Transform>Transform, and either look at the adjustments in my picture or the tutorial's preview

One you've got your shape, you drag it into the GRAPHIC STYLES window. The cool part after this is you can make a different simple shape like a square and click on the style, and then it will look like the picture on the left, in square version.

The next step is to expand the object you just styled: Object>Expand Appearance, then un group (ctrl+shift+g) the resulting shapes.


After, double click the blend tool and type in a number in the "specified steps" field.

Now, Ctrl-Opt-B with everything selected to make the blend, and it should turn out something like as seen on the left.

And you should be able to see the path I highlighted in pink; it can be changed to a straight or curvy line. Draw the line and then go to Object>Blend>Replace Spine, and if you go to the tutorial, you'll see the final image.

Thanks for reading! I'll be back soon:)

The Girl Effect and Typography

Hey guys! I hope you had a good weekend.

So you may have read something about "the girl effect" in my previous blog, well today I'm dedicating this post to the introduction video.

A little while ago in tech class we had a whole unit about typography, and I saw this video and was amazed by how simple it is, yet it still gives me chills when I watch it. The video is made entirely of writing in a simple and readable font in all capitol letters. The whole video is made of the colours black, white and orange, which I thought was very simple and effective, especially because there are no words actually being said, but only music in the background, but the timing of the words is in sync with the music, especially at 0:31, where is says (DRAMATIC PAUSE) and the music stops briefly at the same time. There's actually a voice in my head kind of pausing and going faster or slower with the words


I also like the meaning behind it, I thought the girl helping a girl concept was really interesting. It really doesn't take a lot of effort to keep someone on the right track, all people need is education and a decent living space, so it's really unfortunate that developed nations have too much, while some developing nations barely have anything, even clean water to drink. I think everyone should check the website out.

Well that's it for now, I'll be back soon!

-Roshni

Good Websites and Bad Websites

Hey!

I'm going to be discussing what defines a good website and a bad website today.

So what's considered a bad website?

MLIA - My Life is Average

Although I'm a fan of this website, once I learned the 10 principles of Web Design, I deemed it a bad website in terms of design.

True, the site is funny, but when a user goes to the website for the first time, they would lose interest quickly, because you can't tell what the website is about. Once the user looks at the navigation bar, they will see "submit a story" or "vote on submissions" and guess that the website is about sharing stories, but they will not know exactly what the website does until they search around, or go to the "about" section. There is a very eye catching advertisement right at the top of the page, making it one of the most prominent things on the web page. This is bad because it diverts the user's attention away from the actual content of the website. The final reason why I think this is a bad website, in design terms, is that there is too much white space at the sides (it is cut off in the picture) and everything is clustered in the center.

What's considered a good website?

The Girl Effect

The girl effect is, as quoted on the home page, "A powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate." There is an introduction page when you enter the website. If you click AGREE or DISAGREE, it takes you to an introduction video (Which I find very inspiring and I will blog about it later) which you have the choice to skip. After that it takes the user to the homepage. The homepage is very clean-cut and straight-forward. There is very effective writing because you can tell that the site is about an organization for girls in developed countries helping girls in developing, poverty-stricken countries. The site is easy to navigate; on the homepage there are three main options: LEARN, GIVE and SHARE, when you scroll over them, it will tell the user where the link takes them (shown below). The thing I like most about the website is that it's very simple. There is a lot of white space, so it's breathable, and all the animations (which only happen when they are clicked on) are purposeful and effective.

So I hope this post helped you guys see what defines a good and bad website! I shall be back soon!

-Roshni

Candy Cane Text

Hey guys!

I was looking through some photoshop tutorials and I found a tutorial on how to make text look like candy canes. I thought it was cool so I thought I'd check it out.



You start by making the candy cane pattern as the background. After that you type out the text you want and adjust it (adjustments are shown in the tutorial.) Then you have to select the text (ctrl+click on the text layer). The tutorial is straightforward, so it'll guide you through the rest.

I hope that was helpful! It takes a lot of steps, but the finished product (The image shown is from the website, I'm working on my own right now) looks really cool. I know the holidays have passed a long time ago, but I liked the effect.

-Roshni