Semester 1 Review

What Did I Learn?

Technology

     Throughout the semester, I learned how to better use Illustrator so my patterns looked natural and connected together so when putting my pattern onto mockups and a digital layout of my box, it would all fit correctly and perfectly. I have learned so much in the technology department of e-Com. When I was a Freshmen, I could barely use Photoshop, and Premier Pro. I struggled so much, but i eventually learned how to use both of them efficiently. The next year when I was a Sophomore, I hated Illustrator because I didn't know anything. It was if I was starting over again in the learning process. I eventually learned the tools and shortcuts of Illustrator that I now use Illustrator whenever there's Graphic Design involved, even in my daily life. I used to do very small projects in Illustrator that would take a couple hours to about a day, but now I have done so many month long projects in and out of Illustrator that I have the stamina and attention span to dit down and do what I need to get done. My Sophomore year, we did many Photoshop tutorials, and then towards the end, I did a Vector portrait of my grandfather and many other vector portraits. The Photoshop tutorials took minutes, maybe a hour at most. The Vector Portrait took many weeks and hours to do. I had to stay after school to finish the project. I worked so hard and stayed after school so long that my muscles in my hands were sore. While I worked so much in Illustrator, I do need to go back and do some Photoshop work since those skills have been neglected for some time now. 

Collaboration and Communication

     In Graphic Design, I often asked my teacher and the people around me what they thought of my design once I was done. I'd get compliments as well as critiques. I did my best to fix my designs based on the critiques and see what worked best. Everyone around me had amazing ideas to share. In the past, I wasn't very open or vocal about anything. I was mostly introverted, and still introverted to this day. However, thanks to Video and other events outside of e-Com, I am able to fulfill any role needed and am ready to give my opinion or thoughts on something if need be. I am also more open about asking for critiques during random stages of the creating process. I have made great friends because of e-Com not just in the Graphic Design branch, but in the other branches as well. 

     Before I even entered high school, I was very communicative. I always told teachers when I would be absent and e-mail them when I was sick or gone unexpectedly. So, from a professional standpoint, I was communicative, but from a more casual standpoint, not so much. Once I get to know people, I become very open, but team projects were always something I didn't really like. Thanks to e-Com, I have had many opportunities to be open and communicate what needs to be done as well as goof around here and there.

Project Management

      In middle school and even sometimes to this day, I procrastinate quite often, however if I am away from distractions and given "free" time, then I get projects and other things done usually before the deadline. Going through the e-Com program, I have always completed projects and have been aware of deadlines. I have stayed after school for hours sometimes finishing a project. I try to use class time to my advantage and use as much of it as possible to work on a current project. One thing I wish to correct in the future, however, is to stay on task better and not get sidetracked by friends. 

Leadership

     I wouldn't consider myself a leader. In group projects, I fulfill any role that needs to be filled. However, if being a leader or director or head project person is the role that needs to be filled, I'll step up and be the leader. I do have many leadership qualities like listening to others as well as being able to take control of situations. 

Semester 2 Final

Short Film

    

 Project

For this project, everyone in my class had to write a script to possibly make into a short film that would be 3-5 minutes long. After hearing everyone's script and ideas, the class voted for the top five scripts, and then we were assigned onto teams based on the type of story we wanted to do. I wanted to do a mystery story, so I was put on a team that was doing a mystery story.

Challenges and roles

     It took my team and I two weeks to complete. Some challenges we face were our director and one of our actors being gone due to illness. We filmed what we could with me being mostly behind the camera. Another team member, Maleah, helped me behind the camera and helped choreograph scenes. She and I filled in as director when our director was gone. The rest of my team, including Maleah, was acting in the short film, so I had a lot of time behind the camera and recording.
     I was also the editor for my team. I really wanted to edit because it's my favorite part of the filmmaking process. I had to sharpen some shots in Adobe Premier Pro, which is an amazing video editor, as well as color correct some shots, which was fun. Two shots were originally very, very orange, so I tried my best to tone that down and make it more natural. I could have done better with those two shots if i spent more time on them, but sadly, I didn't. I also had to color correct the shots in the chase scene. When were filming outside, it was dark and overcast, making the shots more blue looking rather than a sunny, natural, outside look. I also had to mess around with sound because I forgot to check out a mic. The camera was great at picking up sound, but when I was editing the restaurant shots, it was hard to get rid of the music in the background. I tried my best.

What I learned and Feedback

     I learned how to direct people and makes lines were down and memorized for the next shot, color correct, and edit audio.  Some feedback I was given was to make sure the set is clear and to mic the actors when filming in a loud setting. The original script had two more scenes we were going to film, but due to time constraints and actors goofing off, we couldn't film those scenes. We had half of one of the original scenes filmed, but due to scheduling and people getting sick, we couldn't film the other half. However, the ending to this piece still makes sense and works for what we have. In the end, the final product was around 4 and a half minutes long, so i fit the criteria when editing. I really like this piece despite the bad jokes that were thrown in.

Music Video

    
 The goal of this project was to recreate a music video. My group chose to do Pompeii by Bastille. I loved this song, but because I had to listen to it so much while filming, I'd rather skip it on my Spotify playlist. It took us several weeks to film this due to very bad winter weather. Weather was a major challenge when filming due to filming in winter and filming in Kansas. Another challenge we faced was people showing up on time. Our main actor was always late despite the fact that we had communicated in our group chat several times when and where we were filming. I learned to be patient and deal with people when I was in a bad mood. Some feedback my group was given was how good the eyes turned out halfway through the video, but the eyes at the end could be worked on a bit more. If I could change anything about this project I'd change the actor. He wasn't very reliable when it came to scheduling and showing up, so if i could find anyone else that was reliable, I would and replace the original actor in an instant. Overall, my director was great and so was our editor. The film itself is the best it could have been due to many conflicts.

Class Time

     If I was the editor, I spent majority or all of my time editing the film. I really enjoy editing, so it was no problem for me if I was assigned to editor. I usually took a back seat and filled in any roll needed, but if the director was gone, I filled in that roll and took over. For the short film, we were lucky enough to be able to film during class, which is a rarity for entertainment filming. If i wasn't filming or editing, I worked on my graphic design work and practiced my Illustrator and Photoshop skills. I don't do much outside of class unless my group plans to film. I try to make it to filming, and majority of the time, I do show up.

Strengths and Weaknesses

     I am really good at editing and enjoy perfecting projects. I have improved a lot when it comes to color correction and editing clips. I've also learned where to cut a clip to get it to be more natural when put together with other clips. 

     While I am good at editing, I need to work on sound. I have a basic understanding of how to edit sound, but need to practice more. 

Summary and Final Thoughts

     I loved editing the short film. Overall, I wish I did more editing. I learned how to use equipment properly, how to edit to enhance projects, and how to be a team player on projects like these.  One goal for next year, even though I won't continuing Video, is to continue to practice editing and maybe make a few videos in the future.
     There are a lot of good students in my video class that will go on to do great things. I really enjoyed working with my group for the high school movie trailer and wished we could have filmed more to finish our project. I have made a lot of good memories with this class and I hope everyone goes on to do great things and to do what they love. At times, there was a lot of stress, but eased up towards the end.

Semester 2 Final

Vector Portrait

       For this project, I had to find a high-resolution photo of me, a family member, or a pet. Then, I put the photo into Photoshop, cropped it, and posterized it. Next, I put the photo into Illustrator and started outlining the different colors I saw in the photo. The second to last step was to fill in all the outlines with the colors from the photo. Lastly, I put a gradient behind all my work as a background. This project took me about a week. I had to stay after school and go in during study hall to finish this project. I learned how to use the pen and curvature tool in Illustrator. Some suggestions I had were to make sure everything as filled in and no blank space was showing on my subject. Some changes I made during this project were making sure everything looked correct and all the colors blended together. I also tried to not get so detailed, but other times I forgot, which dragged out the time I spent on this project. Overall, I love this project. I love it so much that I did several more during Spring break to the point I was sick and tired of doing vector portraits. 

Typography

    My next project was typography. I chose several quotes that I liked and narrowed my list down to the top four. I chose quotes that were in French and English since French is the language I'm learning. For this project, it took me about a week or two to complete. The first part was in black and white and the second part was adding color. I faced a couple challenges like making sure the text was big enough to read. I learned how to wrap text around objects and shapes. a tip I got from my teacher was to make sure the text was big enough to read. Some changes I made were color choices. For the TV, I made little squares to form a rectangle and made it look like TV static. Overall, I really like some of my quotes, others, not so much.

Logo Design

     The next project that I liked was designing a personal logo. I had to sketch thirty possible designs and decide on the top five. I also had to pick three color schemes from a color generator where I could lock colors that I liked, and keep generating more colors that fit with the color(s) I locked. I chose to design two different bees, a tulip, a star, and a bird. Some included my initials and over time I got rid of my initials and ended up with a more simpler design. I ended up choosing a yellow tulip with a black background. I learned how to mix and match colors. Some feedback I had was that brighter colors against dark backgrounds stand out more, so I took that advice and used it. Originally, the tulip had my initials on it, but as I said, the initials disappeared after a while. Overall, I'm proud of the logo I ended up with. 

Class Time

     I spent most of my class time working on assigned projects, and when I was finished, I worked on my own side projects. I worked in both Illustrator and Photoshop to continue learning the tools available and how I could use them. I created more vector portraits and photoshop edits of my favorite characters from tv and movies. Outside of class, I created vector portraits and photoshop edits to practice my skills. 

 Strengths

     I am very strong in communicating with people whether it's e-mail or text. I am also very good about getting projects done on time even if it means staying after school for many hours to get something done. I am also good about asking for critiques from peers and my teacher so I can improve my work before I turn it in. 

Weaknesses

     I need to work on staying focused and not goof off when I'm trying to get something done. I understand it's okay to take a break, but I need to stay focused if I want to get stuff done. 

Conclusion

     What I love most about Sophmore year of Graphic Design are the different projects I was able to do and how I could still use Photoshop and Illustrator for one project. What I would change about next year is to add some side projects for students if they get done early with their assignment. For example, to enhance a student's skill in photoshop, if they have finished their main project, give them a theme like outer space or psychedelic and let them create a collage or edit of that theme in Photoshop and either let them turn it in for extra credit or let them turn it in for endorsement hours. One goal I would like to set for next year is to improve my skills in Illustrator and Photoshop. In conclusion, this year was fun with all the different projects I got to do and the side projects I've done. 

High School Movie Trailer

Pre-Production

     My team and I worked on re-creating the trailer to the Breakfast Club, one of my favorite movies. For pre-production, my team and I did the necessary work like storyboarding. We all worked very well together from the very beginning and felt very confident in ourselves and this project. 

Production 

     We watched the trailer and some members of my team knew other students who looked eerily similar to the original cast of the Breakfast Club. All of the people we originally contacted were able to work and film with us in the beginning. We filmed mostly in the library because that is the location where majority of the movie takes place. All was great when we started filming. Halfway through our filming session, we all ate pizza, that someone had ordered ahead of time, and drank soda. We all were laughing and telling stories, but eventually got back to work. We filmed quite a bit more, and around 6 o'clock, the camera, which was on a tripod and we made sure it was on securely at the beginning of filming, suddenly fell and landed on the ground. We picked it up to make sure it was okay, but the battery broke. My team tried to fix the battery as I started cleaning up because I knew there was no way we'd be able to fix it. Nothing worked, so we e-mailed our teacher. Our teacher gave us some tips on how to prevent this in the future and that no one was in trouble due to the fact it was a complete accident and no one intentionally damaged the battery. The actors, the team and I weren't able to film again for the next two weeks due to conflicting schedules. 

Editing

     I wasn't the editor for our project, but the person who was editing often shared and showed us his progress. One creepy thing that happened during editing was the video we filmed synched up to the original audio of the original characters. This was not planned at all, and we recorded audio while filming to use instead of the original, but we decided to use the original audio instead since it lined up exactly. Another creepy thing that happened was our cast we picked looked very, very similar to the original. My team and i often compared our footage to the original to help sequence the shots, but also to see the similarities. 

Overall

     I really enjoyed this project due to the fact I got to recreate the trailer to the Breakfast Club. I think the difficulties of this project will help me to prepare for the future. Some things I would do differently is prevent the camera from falling so my team could film all the shots in one day. I would keep everything else the same. 

Vector Portrait

Pre-Production

      I didn't want to do a photo of myself for this project and instead do a vector portrait of a family member. I originally was going to do one of my brother when he was younger, but couldn't find a good photo, so I did my grandpa instead. Once I found the photo I wanted to do, I dragged it into photoshop to posterize it, or to lower the quality of the photo a little bit, and cropped it to 8 inches by 10 inches. Once all that was done, I saved it to the school server.

Production

      Next was putting the posterized and cropped photo of my grandpa into Illustrator. I did an organic portrait, which is outlining the entire photo using curves and lines. I learned how to use the pen tool. I used to have no idea what the pen tool did or how to use it and now I can trace anything with the pen tool in Illustrator. I used multiple layers to stay somewhat organized. One layer was for the face, another layer for the neck, one for the ear, one for the shirt etc. etc. At first, I was detailed but got a little less detailed as I went on due to me realizing that some colors I see when I zoom in didn't really appear when I zoomed out. I mostly focused on making sure the major parts of the portrait looked similar to the original. I started falling behind and knew that I would finish when the original due date was announced. I did come into my graphic design classroom for two-three weeks during study hall to get myself back on track. On the third week, I had graphic design, which on this particular day was just about an hour long, study hall, which I came in to work on the portrait, which was about 30-45 minutes long, and finally, stayed after school for an hour and a half to work and finish this portrait. At this point in the project, I knew a lot of shortcut keys to use certain tools, like P for the pen tool, I for the eyedropper tool, Command S to save, Command Z to undo. My muscles in my hand and forearm were a bit tired after working on this project for two hours straight. I then added a gradient background which was blue and green. 

Post-Production

 I am proud of my finished version. I like how it came out and wouldn't really do anything differently except realize that the really tiny details won't be seen in the "big picture". After I finished this project, I worked on a couple different portraits at home due to me getting Illustrator and photoshop downloaded onto my mom's laptop. For now, though, I won't work on anymore due to how time-consuming this type of project is. I love this project and the end results, but after doing four more portraits, I got tired and felt drained from working on them for long periods of time. I will probably do more in the future, but for now, I've had enough. 

 

This is the photo I used as a reference
for the portrait

This is the final product. The vector portrait I made. 

Music Video

 

   

Pre-Production

For this project, my team and I chose to do the song Pompeii by Bastille. We wanted to copy the music video for this song as best as we could, but we deleted many scenes in our video that were in the original because of the location or due to time constraints. We wanted to portray "the end of the world" which is the main theme of the song.
     During pre-production, we went through a couple music videos, and ultimately decided to do Pompeii because we thought it'd be easier to do and manageable. As a team, we decided not to do a lot of what was in the original video, mostly because our video had to be around two minutes and thirty seconds. One of my teammates was the director due to her confidence and assurance in what to do. I carried around and mostly manned the camera equipment, but the director took over controlling the camera from time to time. I always checked to make sure we were following the rule of thirds and the 180 rule. In the beginning, my team kept asking who would be the actor.

Production

     Production was rough. The director wanted to film at a park about twenty-five minutes away from where I live for one of the scenes, but they wanted o film early in the morning because the shot in the original video looked like sunrise. The first time we filmed there, our director showed us around the park and possible areas to film. We started setting up the equipment, and I put the battery in the camera along with the SD card, and tried turning it on but it wouldn't. Filming was cancelled that day. We all planned to film at the park at least four times. The first time was the one I just talked about. The second time, we got majority of the scenes based off of the original video done, but the actor was late. Third time, our actor never showed up due to illness. Fourth time, the roads were so icy that our director spun out twice and both our actor and director had a difficult time driving.
     Continuing on with more production, we also had to film at a "restaurant" with an elderly woman. Luckily, our editor's grandma was willing o let us film at her house and would be in the video. Unfortunately, our director couldn't make it, so I was "director" for the evening, and our actor got lost on his way to the grandma's house. He was at least forty minutes late. We eventually started filming. I felt confident in all but one scene, but we tried doing a couple retakes, but our actor had to leave, so we had to deal with what we got.
     Another place we filmed at during production was at a parking garage.  Everyone was a little confused as to where we were meeting, but we eventually found each other, and started location scouting there for a bit before finally filming. We got what we needed from that location, but we did plan to re-shoot there again.
     Due to the weather, we weren't able to re-shoot anything and lost a couple day where we could've filmed more scenes. Once we started filming, we stayed on track and tried to get as much done as possible. We did goof off  every once in awhile, but we did get back on track right away.

Editing

     Finally, editing. I didn't edit the video, but from what the editor has told us, they were editing for an hour and Adobe Premier Pro crashed. They luckily saved the project before it crashed but it was still bad. After that, they said Premier kept acting weird and would crash on him about every ten minutes. They eventually got it done, but I could tell it was exhausting for them to edit the video.

Overall

     I got to work the camera quite a bit since I was responsible for carrying equipment around to and from places. My team and I had a group chat so we could communicate when and where we wanted to be someplace. I tried my best to communicate what times worked best for me along with what times I could film. I did become the director temporarily at the grandma's house because our director wasn't able to come.
     If I could do something differently, I could stress the point to my team about showing up early or at least on time due to at least two people showing up late consistently. I'd also do this project during any other season than winter.
    I would still delete all the scenes we originally deleted due to the difficulty of location. I'd also do the same song because unlike other groups, I haven't gotten sick from listening to this song yet. IT's an okay song, in my opinion, so I wasn't ever annoyed when we had to listen to it over and over again.
     For my next project, I'd make sure we pick someone who is reliable and will show up on time for filming to be the main actor. I'd also make sure communication is clear as to when and where to film.
     Overall, this project was a bit stressful due to weather conditions and scheduling. I'm glad this project is done. I am really proud of what the video looks like and how much we actually did. We didn't get the video to two minutes and thirty seconds, but not a lot of groups did. My two favorite shots in the video are when our main actor looks off into the distance with the sun setting and there's smoke blowing out of a building in the distance, and when the Grandma looks at the main actor because her eyes are black due to the magic of editing, which took our editor an hour to do. Again, I'm impressed with how well the final product turned out.

Typography

Pre-Production

     The first steps to this project were finding quotes that were significant to me. I found ten quotes, and then picked four out of the ten quotes to use for my project. All of my quotes were French, so I decided to do this project with the French and English versions of the quotes. The second step was picking fonts. I picked a total of six fonts, however, I did not use one of the fonts in my project. 

Production
      The third step in this project was working in Illustrator. I learned how to use layers, type tool, gradient tool, the tool where I can type around a shape (I forget what it's called), shape tool, and the direct selection tool.

     I arranged my project by making four artboards, one for each of the quotes I picked in Pre-production. I made a different shape for each quote so I could use a reference for what I want the quote to look like. On the first artboard, it was a heart, the second was an eye, third was a tv, and the fourth one was a peace sign. I had ideas for what text to use for the different quotes.

     Originally, our quotes had to be in black and white before we started using color.  All of my quotes had a white background, but I changed two of them to have a black background. This made the two quotes more interesting and stand out from the other two.

     When it was time to move on to color,  I used blue and yellow for my first quote, green and black for my second, different shades of grey for my third one, and two different gradients for my last one. After I finished my first round of adding color, I asked my teacher for any critiques, and she did. I fixed up what she critiqued, and made sure everything looked better with these new changes.

     On my first quote, I added more of the heart shape I made, scaled it down a bit, and changed the color to a brighter blue. I did this process again. In total, I had three heart shapes on my first quote. I also copied the text on the heart and changed the copied text color to a dark gold color, and put the original text over it. Around the heart is the quote in French and in English. I also added a drop shadow to the text surrounding the heart to make it stand out from the page a bit.

     For my second quote, I added a darker green circle to the iris of the eye and added a little white shine. I also fixed the text around the iris.

     Moving on to my third project, I added some texture to the grey squares that made up the pixels on the tv to make it seem more like white noise. I also used the bulge option to make the square of pixels a bit round so it doesn't look flat I later went back and changed the text color to red, yellow, green and blue.

     Lastly, my fourth quote has a purple, blue and green gradient as the background. The text has a red, yellow, green, and light blue gradient. I also bloated the text a bit to add some more direction. For textures, I gave the text a mosaic texture to make it stand out even more.

Final Product

 This is my first one, and I think I did okay. It's cute and simple, but if I were to do this one again, I'd probably pick a different shape. I think the critiques I got on this one improved this one fro being eh to pretty good.

 My second one is very interesting in style. I picked shapes depending on what the quote talked about. The English is very hard to read compared to the French, but the English portion says, "It is with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye"

I chose to do a tv shape for this quote due to how political some tv shows or movies can get. As kids, everything is new and exciting. Eventually, kids grow up and realize that things aren't as mystical as they seem to be. As kids, we watch tv shows full of adventure, and learning new lessons about manners or being kind to others. Eventually, kids grow up to be adults. As adults, there is less emphasis on cartoons, tv shows and sometimes movies, and more emphasis on what is going on in the real world. I used tv as an example to explain this quote. Another reason why I chose a tv for the shape was because when I first saw this quote, the first thing that popped in my head was tv.  I really like how this one turned out.

My fourth and final quote. "Doing is better than saying". I chose a peace sign for this because this quote reminds me of protests throughout the years. Protesters do protests for multiple reasons, but their actions can greatly affect others, whether it's positive or negative. If protesters were to complain instead of doing something, nothing would be changed, dramatically at least. I also chose Gradients for this project just to change things up a bit. I feel like this one is pretty good. The peace sign shape is evident, and the colors work well together.