60Painters

Heather Graham - Untitled Face.02

We went to the 60Painters exhibit last week and we were told to take one piece we liked and write about it. I choose Heather Graham's 'Untitled Face.02', I choose this piece because I liked how the face was really hard to see within all the white due to fact the features were done in this light grey color. Despite how hard it is to see the girl's face it's obvious it's a female and she's quite pretty as well from what you can see. I love the shading that she did to give this piece depth.

Portfolio Site Design

Yesterday we learned about the 10 principals of web design and today we were to find two portfolio websites; one that we thought was the best and one we thought was the worst. Here's my choices.

Emotions by Mike

I choose this portfolio site as the best because, it's simple. It leaves nothing to be questioned, everything you need to see if properly labeled and easy to see, and within his portfolio he's labelled the artwork with what the piece is, either a site, logo, icon or character design, it makes everything simple and easy to find. Another nice thing about his portfolio is that the designs are opened up in a new window so you don't have to backspace or try and find the tab the design was opened up in.

His use of negative space is really nice, everything is spaced evenly and nicely off-centered so it's visually appealing. The sunburst under the legs gives the dark-ish green a nice gradient  and adds a bit of pop to the page. Also, the fact it's all above the fold makes it easier for the user to use.

Freshet

 I choose this site as the worst because, though they use negative space efficiently and it's visually appealing, it's confusing. There's no navigation, it's all just content and it's confusing and leads you to believe there's more to do but in truth there isn't.

The AGO - Works that Inspire

So a few weeks back we took a trip to the AGO, and we got to see a lot of different types of art. We were told to write about two pieces that had an impact on us, one from the pieces we were shown by Mr. Koczij and the other by the ones shown to us by Ms. Johnson.

Television Works - Iain Baxter

This was from the upper level that Mr. Koczij had shown us, it was part of a collection of TVs that had a scenery painted on the screen while static played on the screen giving this kind of moving effect to the painting. I choose this piece because it was something that had stuck in my mind for most of the day, mainly because of the whole idea of it, I didn't find the actual paintings to be interesting or significant but the idea presented by mixing the painting with the static on the TV had made this picture significant.

Chevreuse II - Jean Paul Riopelle

 From the lower levels I found this painting that looked it had been done with a palette knife. I choose this piece because I liked the coloring of the artwork, how it was kind of sectioned and melded into each other, also I liked the patterning to the piece, the sunrays that were made by using the palette knife.

Artistic Inspiration - Lan Wu

Untitled - Lan Wu

Lan Wu is an artist from indonesia he creates really intricate digital art pieces you can find either off his wordpress or on his deviantart. He creates this almost painting like artworks using a tablet and photoshop, he has cartoon styled art pieces as well as the more detailed ones.

I find Lan Wu's art inspiring because they have this interesting magical kind of style to it, they have this high level of details that I find amazing. 

Helvetica - A Font that Changed History

Modernism, created at the end of WWI, consisted of clean lines, grids and simplicity. Modernism pushed for new fonts and from there, Helvetica was born. Helvetica is a font based on being simple, clean and even, all things that are representative of Modernism.

"It's air, you know. It's just there. There's no choice. You have to breathe, so you have to use Helvetica" - Erik Spiekermann

Erik Spiekermann believes Helvetica is overused, it's everywhere and we just have to deal with it. He compares Helvetica to a heavier person wearing a too tight shirt, and that Helvetica is like that in a sense. By this he means that Helvetica won't work for everything and you shouldn't use it just because it's there. I agree with what Spikermann says, that just because you have the option to use Helvetica doesn't mean you should, I feel that type should convey a message about what your writing and sometimes different is best. 

"Don't confuse legibility with communication. Just because something is legible doesn't mean it communicates and, more importantly, doesn't mean it communicates the right thing." - David Carson 

Carson is saying that even though you may be able to read what something says it doesn't mean that the feel or message it's giving off may not be what your trying to show or it might not even exist. Helvetica is a font that can be applied to many different things, it's often used and will always look legible and nice, but that  doesn't mean that it'll send of the right feeling. Like if you were to use a Helvetica font for a horror movie, it may not communicate the same as if you used a grunge font.

Helvetica is everywhere, and everyone uses it. It can seem friendly and also seem industrial depending on what you use it for, you'll see helvetica everywhere and used in any way, but remember that it's not the only font nor is it the best font for everything.

'Not One With The Crowd'

Surrealism of Social Anxiety

 For my CyberArts tech class, we were supposed to make a surrealist picture based on an issue in the world. I choose how people felt outcasted or social anxiety for my project. Social anxiety is something that effects a lot of people, but isn't really talked about. Originally I had wanted to put my model so she was blended into the wall and instead of a dance - social outing type thing - I had originally wanted to have a classroom but felt that only really effected students - even though that was mainly the point. Also I had wanted to put words over the image making it look like it was blended into the wall, but I felt the picture represented itself well enough without the words.

 I find this idea surreal because the image is blended into the wall, it was supposed to represent that she was at the place but she felt as if she was in that lone brick area.

 For my design process first I took a picture of my model, taking her picture against a white background, lighting only on one side. For the background I went and found an area at the back of the school that was kind of secluded and used natural light to take that picture, the picture of the party was found off of the internet.

 Getting started on putting the picture together, I started with the picture of the brick area as my base, then removing the background from the picture of my model I copy and pasted her onto the layer, removing the halo around with an option I found in the select menu. From there, I resized her to fit the size of the corner before taking the picture of the actual party and masking it into the image, using a soft eraser on the image to make it kinda blend, then I fixed the opacity and used the dissolve mode to help with the feeling of blending.

 I really enjoy how the picture had come out, I feel satisfied with how it looked though, I wish I had picked a better image for the 'social outing' type thing and that I had had time to put in the words as spray paint on the walls. 

Discord - Culminating

Still Image

 For our culminating we were to make a still image and video - that tied into each other - that expressed the meaning of a word. My word was "Discord", it has many meaning that all really tie in to conflict or chaos, I choose to narrow it down and really just focus on it's meaning of lack of harmony or concord, basically chaos. My idea for the video was originally something more focusing on the fire and water, but I decided to add in more concepts that kind of tied in to give it more interest, and for the still I originally wanted to have the fire on the top of water but I opted for in within the water with flames around it instead.

 The elements that tied my still and video together was the fire in water theme, having flames underneath water and also the clashing of elements in this case, the red on the cup clashing with the blue almost trying to cover it. This shows my words by showing conflict between two things, either the red or the blue or the water and the fire.

 The video I feel, expressed the meaning of discord I was going for well, it was multiples clips that were shaky and showing some sort of lack of harmony, along with static. There was no music, because, rather than find music that showed dissonance I went to have the static clashing against the silence as well as the random sounds you can here during the black and white clips, I felt that it showed more of a dissonance that an actual music piece could. The scenes in my video were of fire under water, a chemical reaction that showed fire exploded out of water, earthquakes, static and some shaky black and white clips. There was no real order to the clips, I just went with what felt right to put there and felt clashing with the scene before it, the static how over was like a scene break in a sense, also I always found static so interesting and felt it helped get the feeling of chaos and discord across. I used the soften effect and the earthquake effect on my self shot clips because it helped fit more of the sense and helped emphasize the flame.

 Creating this movie I used iMovie HD and a Nikon 3100, using the nikon I was able to record scenes of my illusion of fire underwater and using iMovie I was able to put the clips together, making my collective video. For the still I used the Nikon and Adobe Photoshop.

 I feel that these two collective works helped show my word, and I enjoyed this project, it was fun and required a lot of deep thinking, but I'm proud of my work. I think my still could've been improved on with the showing of the meaning, but overall I feel pretty good about it.