"Nature Man"

      This assignment was to Photoshop a man using either the provided photos or our own and edit him using the photos. The goal was to keep his face visible

The Process

Here is Alien Man. My edit of the challenge

     At the beginning, I was going to do a horror themed edit, but I didn't find any images I liked or thought would be interesting, so I ditched the idea, and decided to make it Outer Space-galaxy-star themed. I found a lot of different images of stars and planets as well as some alien themed photos as well and compiled all of them together and created Alien Man, at least that's what I titled it once I saved it. I didn't use the photos provided because they photos of mountains, trees, tree roots, hence the name of this blog, "Nature Man".  

      I used a lot of layer masks to edit all of this together. It wasn't difficult, but it was a lot of "rinse and repeat". Every photo I added had to be resized, erase the unwanted bits, make sure it looks "natural" etc. I I really enjoyed this project, and I highly recommend doing this challenge to anyone with basic photoshop skills. I used a lot of the skill from the previous lessons and incorporated them into this project. There were some days where all I wanted to do was work on this project. 

Finished Project

     I'm really happy with the way it came out. It is interesting and weird, but I think it works. I have shown some of my friends and they all seemed to like it. I did finish early because I came in during lunch to work on it because of how much fun I had working on it. Since I finished early, I had extra time to make another edit on a different photo. Same rules applied but it was whoever we found on Google. 

The Extra Edit

     This extra edit was especially fun because it is of a video game character from a game I like. The game is called Undertale and the character I chose is Undyne. I think . I did a pretty good job. I didn't do as much detail as my last edit. For example, I didn't edit the clothes, hair or background and instead, focused more on the facial features. Again, this edit was for fun, but I still think I did a decent job. I did forget to edit some things like the earrings, and forgot to add some eyeshadow and gills to the character, but I think it's still recognizable. 

Photoshop

What was the project?

The whole purpose of this project was to learn about photoshop, its tools and how to photoshop different items and people. 

                       Lesson One

     The first lesson was on content aware fill, which is deleting unwanted items out of a photo or backgr
ound. I had four different photos that I had to photoshop and it was simple and easy to do. I really enjoyed learning this simple trick and it will help me in the future. Originally, this photo to the left had many unnecessary items and blemishes, but thanks to Photoshop, I easily got rid of those unwanted blemishes and objects and made it what it is now.

Lesson Two

     Patch Tool is a variation of lesson one. I learned that Content Aware Fill won't always work fr getting rid of unwanted objects or items. The Patch Tool is a good substitute to get rid of bigger items such as t-shirt logos. I had a harder time making the shirt look more natural, but for the lesson, I did a good job.

       Lesson Three

     While getting rid of unwanted items is all good and an essential lesson in Photoshop, knowing how to make the rest look natural without the unwanted item is also necessary. That's what Clone Stamp and Healing Brush help you do. I thought I did a pretty good job on this. The goal of this project was to get rid of a clothing tag on the jacket near the arm and pocket of the right side of the photo. Overall I did a pretty good job, however I did make one, very little minuscule mistake near the pocket, but from afar, it isn't noticeable.  I did enjoy learning this skill and will need it in the future.

Lesson Four

The objective of this Photoshop lesson was to get rid of unwanted background items. Tis lesson was called Clone Stamp and Patch Tool. We used the clone stamp from the previous lesson as well as the patch tool from lesson two and combined them to erase a pole in the background. We used the clone stamp to get rid of the section near the guy's head as well as the entire pole, then used the patch tool to make the sky more natural. I enjoyed this lesson more than the previous lessons. This and lesson one are my top favorites. 

Lesson Five

Lesson Five was using the spot healing brush to get rid of blemishes and make the skin smoother. The photo was already in black and white and originally, the boy was covered in dirt and just had some blemishes here and there. Thanks to the spot healing brush, it was easy to get rid of the dirt spots and blemishes. This lesson was okay, I did enjoy it, but not one I'd want to do every week. 

Lesson Six

Out of all the lessons so far, this lesson was the most complicated and least liked by me. The goal was to make a collage out of three photos of a girl modeling. As you can see, I messed up on one of her faces. I had to go back to different sections of the lesson and repeat many things because I would make a mistake and have to delete a layer. This was the hardest out of all of them and took me many days, almost a week, to complete. This lesson was complicated and harder than the previous lessons so it makes sense as to the amount of time I had to spend on it, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it. All in all, it was a good way to combine every skill previously learned as well as some new ones, but not one I'd do again. 

 

Self-Portrait

     Description

     For my first official Video assignment of the 2018-2019 school year, I decided to show the hobbies and activities I like and do on a regular basis with a twist. I'm speaking French because I've been learning the language since fourth grade. I've always been interested in the language, culture and the country of France. This past summer, I did visit France and it's very different than America, but I enjoyed every minute I was there, whether it was at the Eiffel Tower or at a little cafe, watching the people pass by. I wanted to speak in French because it's a language I've spent a lot of time to learn and I wanted to practice my vocabulary by speaking it in the video. Through this video I want people to see how much I know and how I can communicate to others in a foreign language.
     Out of all the other self-portraits I've seen I really liked Jaiden's video where he wrote a poem touching on how movies portray homosexuality and racism and how homosexuality and racism is a deeper problem and real life than what everyone would like to believed. I thought it was really brave of him to do that and inspired me to a better friend and person.

Explain

     I wanted to film against a blank wall with nothing else to look at around me so all the attention goes to me and what I am doing. I also tried to find a bright room so the object and myself are visible and easy to see. As for the framing, I made it so the audience could see examples of what I like that relate to a bigger topic and made sure to keep that example up so the audience has enough time to process and make connections before moving on. There are a ton of examples in the video but one is when I'm talking about watching tv, and that I prefer Phineas and Ferb. All of these connect to what I wanted to show about myself because they are things, activities, and hobbies I like and what make up me. 

Reflect

     I hope through this video people can gain a better understanding of me, my life and what I like. I think I was successful since I got majority of the activities and hobbies I like in the video. I did have some trouble with some filming at one point because my camera roll was full, and wouldn't record. Most of the other troubles I had were forgetting what I was going to say, and not continually talking and the transistion to the other subject was not the greatest, but I think I did okay. One thing I would do differently is add more examples and maybe write some notes or reminders of what I'm going to say so that way there's no waiting. I learned that it's difficult to get everything want across to the audience and not everything you like will make it into the final cut. 

     

4th Quarter Project

Our Ad Banner

     About the Project

Here is our coupon

      This past quarter, I have been working on a project with three other people. The project was to come up with a new invention, for example, my group came up with Vinels, which are Vines in virtual reality. Then, we had to create a logo, web banner, ads, animations of the packaging and the project, catchphrase, commercial, and a website. I helped out with the logo design and the website. I have been working all quarter, with my team, on this project. I did have to go in during lunch on some occasions to finish a certain part of the project, but besides that, I used majority of my time in class to work on this project.

Here is another version of our logo

     Some challenges we faced were fixing little mistakes in our commercial. There were times that our team felt stressed and overloaded mostly because of little errors and forgetting when we had to turn certain parts of our project in, but we kept working and finished everything on time,
and the hard work paid off.

Here is our logo

     One thing I learned is to be more patient and calm under stress. I was given a lot of positive feedback from my team on the work I did on the website as well as some things I could change or do better on. At the beginning, the text on the website was the text the team used on the logo, but I didn't like it mostly because when I went to preview it, there as no way of telling which text was the heading and what wasn't, so I changed it. Overall, I really liked this project and the team I was on. The hard work from each of us paid off.

Below is our official Commercial

Time Management

Screenshot of our website

One of our ads

     Some of the activities I did to complete the project was turn in
my own version of our commercial, which isn't our official commercial, build the website, and help out with the logo. Since I built the website during the animation rotation section of the project, I didn't have time to create an animation. It was pretty easy for me to stay productive as I built the website and gave advice to my team mates. I mostly communicated with my team on what I needed for the website and how much more work I had left. I did have to come in once at the beginning of the quarter to finish my version of the commercial, but besides that, I finished everything in class. 

The second ad

Strengths

     I maximized my strengths by working hard on my part of the project while also giving advice to the rest of my team when they asked for it. Or, if I got advice from somebody, I'd use it. 

Summary 

     What I loved most about this quarter was building the website because when everything was finally in one place, it looked original and official. All the work the team and I did was finally together in one spot. 

Screenshot of our website

      One thing I would change is if a group is stuck, with no ideas, is give them a list of current problems, whether it's global warming, or a first world problem like not knowing what to eat when you're hungry. This way, it'll give them a little boost in what to do. 

Our Web Banner

     Overall, I learned how to get along with people that don't have the same personality or interests that I do. It was a good experience, and one I'll definetaly run into again. 

     Next year, I hope to grow my skills as well as my list of friends. I hope I can grow my skills in technology as well as learn to communicate better with my teachers, friends, and team mates. 

      

      My final thoughts are that this project was a good idea, even if I was unsure at the start, and it helped me grow as a person to connect with others I'd never thought I'd get along with. 

Here is our animation of our product

Here is the packaging

CSS and CARP Design

      This latest project was a web project. I started using HTML and ending in HTML. It was a learning process for me because I'm not very savvy when it comes to web design. Most of he steps were already written out, so that made things a lot easier. This was all based around a poem, and by applying CARP, the poem looks much better and captivates the reader.

Contrast

     Contrast was used through colors based off the dog as well as the style of text. Some text is bold, and other text is italics. Some colors are darker and other are lighter. The main background is black, but the body, or second background, of the poem is a lighter tan. The heading of the poem is a lighter color than the poem. 

Alignment

     The body of the poem is lined up with the credits at the bottom. The title is lined in the middle with other parts of the title underneath. At the top, there is a link that is aligned with the poem and the credits. 

Repetition

     The title and the credits are the same color. All the colors originate from the dog, repeating a theme. The link at the top has the same color as the body and the title. 

Proximity

     Everything is spaced out evenly from each other. The dog is outside of the body, combining the background with the body. The title is separated by space and font style to create proximity. The stanzas are evenly spaced from each other, making everything else look even. 

Conclusion

     I learned how to apply CARP with web design in HTML. I did have to go into the code a little bit, but it was to make the font Georgia appear on the page. I think CSS is fun to mess around with every once in a while, but not something I want to do everyday. 

Personality Type

     My personality type is INFJ. I’m introvert, intuitive, feeling and judgement. What this means is that I get my energy from being alone, I think of all the possible outcomes, I'm more creative and I think of the future more than I rely on facts. I also think not everything is black and white. I tend to be more loving and caring than logical. I'm also more organized, in control and decisive than  being open and flexible. Some famous people that are like me are Benedict Cumberbatch, Jennifer Connelly, Plato, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mahatma Gandhi, and Thomas Jefferson. There's also some infamous people that have the same personality as me, but everyone has a personality type, so everyone has at least one infamous person with the same personality. 

     For the most part, the description of this personality is fairly close to who I am. There are a few things that are things I wouldn't really call myself, but it is close. For example, being organized. I'm not very organized sometimes, and I call myself an organized mess. I can be messy and unorganized, but there are other times where I am very organized. I also try to be open-minded to discussions or when it comes to making a decision, but not all the time. However, I do like to think of theories and different possibilities. I do think of the future A LOT, and it's usually where i see myself, or the world in five years. I also try to understand other people's though process and why they react the way they do. I find it very interesting. I already noticed some of the things this test told me, so I already knew, and I wouldn't really say it helps me understand myself better. It did make me realize all my habits and tendencies. The activities I do are all the activities INFJ's do. I'm constantly listening to music, I love looking at artwork whether it's my own or others. I also like to study the strokes of the pencil or paintbrush. I love learning about other cultures, writing, reading, and socializing with one or two people. These are all activities INFJ's like to do. When I read that I was in shock because that was the most accurate part of my personality, in my opinion.  

     I think this helps me understand why I tend to take more of a leadership position. I hate the idea of being in charge of a big project, but when the time comes or a problem arises, I tend to lead the group and find possible solutions. I also think of any consequences any possible solution has as well. I guess it's ironic that i'm an introvert, but I also tend to be a leader. I also help people when they are dealing with a tough situation and give them advice. Even if they already tried that, I think of another solution while comforting them. I tend to be shy when I have a new idea because I'm afraid people won't like it. I don't think I've been "misunderstood" in the past because of my personality. The biggest problem I have is when something good happens and I want to tell everyone, but when I walk in the classroom, I don't tell anyone, only my friends. I have had issues with some people in the past. Some people I don't like working with are those who are always talking in class, those who don't care about the work or don't get it done on time, those who are distracted easily or don't pay attention and are constantly saying "What are we doing" or "I don't know what to do". Every once in a while, I'm okay with someone saying that, but not every five minutes. 

      I learned some interesting things about myself like the activities I do. I'm more aware now of my habits and how I interact with people. I also noticed how my personality is rare. It is the least common personality among men and the third least common among women. My personality makes up 2% of the general population. 

   Another part of this test was the LOBG test. This test told me which animal I was most like. The options were Lion, Otter, Beaver, and Golden Retriever. I am most like a golden retriever. This means that i'm very loyal, wanting to be loved by everyone, and have a couple of close friends. I think this fits the best because it fits my personality really well.

Logo Designs

Process

     The latest project in e-Com is designing a personal logo. First, I started by writing my name in different ways like in cursive, my normal handwriting, and trying to mimic other fonts. Then I started drawing shapes around my name. I decided my name was too big for a logo, so I went with my initials. After three pages of sketching, I decided to write my cursive initials in a circle. I then worked on my logo in Adobe Illustrator. I first did it in black and white to make sure it looked good without any color. Once I was happy, I started adding color. The letters have a yellow outline, which, to me, makes it look like they are outlined in gold, and the circle is an red-orange color. I also tried outlining the letters in silver with the circle being blue or purple, but I decided to go with the gold and red-orange because it was bright and energetic. I then messed around with making the circle lighter or darker, and messed around with the letters. Some examples have the letters filled with a grey color with a yellow outline. I like a lot of the darker ones, but when making them smaller, it was hard to tell what it was, so I went with the red-orange circle with yellow outline on the letters. 

Here is my new logo!

Mockups 

     After I chose my logo, I then used the mockups my teacher let us use. A mockup is just an example someone can put their logo on. I decided to go with a round sign, business card, an iPhone app, a small billboard and a storefront. I only needed to do four, but I decided to do one more just to make sure I was happy with my logo.  My logo looked good and I was happy with it, so this is my new logo. I chose warm colors because yellow is happy and energetic while red/orange added to that happy, bright, and energetic feel to the yellow letters. I also decided to go with cursive letters because cursive is very elegant and added some class to my logo.