Graphic Design Final Exam

     For my final exam in graphic design class we were assigned to use a piece of art and create it into a piece of graphic design. The importance of this project was to show if we know the difference between art and graphic design. Art can be interpreted into many different things while graphic design gives a creative yet clear cut message. The very few limitations to this project allowed us to be creative.
     For my final I decided to make my own PETA poster that criticized the use of animal fur for clothing. You can see my poster to the left. I thought I could find a nice piece of art and be able to make a clear message this way. I got an image of two baby foxes off of google. I wanted to find the best image to make people feel sympathetic. I placed this image into a Photoshop document and added the fraise "show your own skin, don't take theirs". I thought this made my message very clear and would give a lasting impression on those who read it. I then added a PETA symbol to the upper left corner of the document to make the poster look more official. I then added effects such as outer glow and bevel and emboss to the symbol to make it look nice. I put the first part of my text at the top of the poster and centered the second pat of my text to the bottom center of the poster and chose a font I thought looked appropriate for the poster. The original images used to create my final product can be seen below.

     I really enjoyed graphic design class this year and thought I got a lot out of it. I learned how to work with the computer a lot better and learned some great skills in photoshop and illustrator. I think I did a great job on my final project.

Original Images:  

 http://amuellergds108.blogspot.com/2011/01/blood-of-eden.html

http://www.celestiaholistic.com/animal_rescue

Alphabet Text Tutorial Project

     For the fourth marking period in my graphic design 1 class we were given many different options for projects that would get us our required 200 "point total".  My previous fire text tutorial was worth 50 points so I decided to do the alphabet text tutorial project worth 150 points.
     In this project I was assigned to gather 26 different photoshop text tutorials off of the internet.  I would use one tutorial for each letter of the alphabet.  This project was very challenging.  It was time consuming because some tutorials were tricky and lengthy.  These tutorials were challenging at first because they required the use of some aspects of Photoshop that I have hardly worked with before.  These aspects included outer glow, inner glow, bevel and emboss, drop shadow, perspective tools and the use of multiple layers to create 3D effects.  The good thing about this project was that most of the tutorials were very similar.  So once I got the hang of it and I was around half way done I was well prepared and equipped for other similar tutorials.
     After creating these 26 4 inch by 4 inch Photoshop text tutorials, I then transferred them into a larger Adobe Illustrator file to make my poster.  The image to the left is the final result and I think it came out well.

Links to tutorials:

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/text-effects-tutorials/using-light-and-shade-to-bring-text-to-life/

http://www.tutorialwiz.com/3D_text2/

http://www.tutorialwiz.com/swirl_text/

http://www.voidix.com/zoomtext.html

http://www.fxencore.de/tutorial_detail/photoshop-tutorials/homepage-tools/plasma-text/

http://www.quantumpetshop.com/tutorials/text/radioactive.asp

http://www.showandtell-graphics.com/reflection.html

http://www.psfreak.com/3d-styled-text

http://www.devwebpro.com/freezing-ice-text-effect/

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/text-effects-tutorials/transparent-glass-lettering-in-photoshop/

http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/text-effects-tutorials/how-to-create-a-gold-text-effect-in-photoshop/

http://photoshopfrenzy.com/?p=71

http://tutorialbeach.com/tutorials/3d_pixel.php

http://www.tutorialwiz.com/snow_on_text/

http://coregfx.org/tutorials/simple-3d-text-tutorial/

http://pshero.com/photoshop-tutorials/text-effects/the-sugar-bag-effect

http://www.tutorial9.net/tutorials/photoshop-tutorials/text-effect-quickies-bubble-text/

http://www.techtut.com/Tutorial/Photoshop/7-Web-2.0-Style-Text-Tutorial.html

http://www.psdmaster.com/?p=9

http://textuts.com/colorful-light-text-effect/

http://www.photoshoplayer.com/intermediate/the-tron-effect/

http://crypticgfx.com/showthread.php?tid=92

http://pswish.com/snake-skin-text-effect-in-photoshop/

http://www.legittutorials.com/colorful-text-effect/

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photoshop-text/text-effects/ghostly-blur/

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photoshop-text/text-effects/multiple-text-strokes.php

Fire Text Tutorial

In this most recent project in my graphic design class, I was to complete a tutorial on fire text.  I used a great tutorial from psd.tutsplus.com.  To begin my tutorial, I was to download a paper texture from bittbox.com to create the background.  This paper texture can be seen to the lower left.  I created my background by combining this paper layer with a gradient layer.  I then added my text.  In this tutorial I used my name 'ZACH'.  I applied many different glow, gradient, opacity and blur effects to the text.  I used the smudge and burn tools to create the base of my flames on the letters.  I downloaded a flame image from flickr.com.  I used the pen and lasso tool to cut this image into 6 separate pieces of flame.  I continued to use many glow effects to perfect the flames and made them fit perfectly on the letters.  Finally, I created a highlight using a white to black radial gradient on a layer which I lowered the opacity of.  This can be seen in the background of the image, which goes from light to dark.
        This was by far the hardest tutorial I've done this year.  It was not as descriptive as ones i have done in the past and it required me to experiment and ask more questions. Although it was challenging, I learned a lot from this project!

Fantasy Scene

Fantasy Scene Poster

          After practicing the tutorial posted earlier in my blog; I was able to create my own fantasy scene poster.  This poster is supposed to have a futuristic space look.  The landscape and cityscape images to the left were the images I used to create my poster.  I got my landscape image from deviantart.com and the cityscape image from parkerlab.bio.uci.edu.  Like I said in the tutorial I first combined these two images to make them blend realistically.  I then used the burn tool to further blend the images and create a dark space look.  I added planets in the sky using planet brushes found at deviantart.com.  I experimented with and made a lot of changes to different gradient, light, sharpness, color and blur effects until I was able to come up with an image that I really liked.
        

          To the left is the original sketch I made before starting my project.  Although my sketch is not very skilled, it accurately shows the idea I came up with and is similar to my final product.  The only change I made is that in my sketch I was planning on including a flying car in my image.  I decided to exclude this from my final project because I think it actually made my project less attractive and unique.      

          Below is the final version of my fantasy scene poster.  After experimenting a lot with the lighting, gradient and color effects, and using many different layers and opacities; I came up with a result that I really liked.  I think the burn tool made for a great spacey/ twilight look for my poster and helped blend my two original images together well.  I worked very hard on the project and some of the steps, including experimenting a lot with many different effects, which ended up being fairly time consuming.  I hope you like my final product!

Fantasy Scene Tutorial

Photoshop Fantasy Scene Tutorial

For my second tutorial based project in my graphic design class I decided to make a futuristic fantasy scene.  To do this I used the "Create Spectacular Concept Art in Photoshop" tutorial.  This tutorial can be found at psd.tutsplus.com.  This tutorial gives instructions on how to make a futuristic looking city by adding stars and planets to the image.  I got an image of a stock grass landscape and a cityscape from google.  I combined these two images well and made use of the burn tool to blend the images as well as make a shadowy, dark look. I then used planet brushes downloaded from deviantart.com to add planets to the sky. I utilized different lighting, color, gradient, blur and curve effects in this tutorial as well.  The maker of the tutorial told that it was up to me to experiment with many of these effects to find one that fits my project perfectly.  I also experimented with many different layers and opacities and used the sharpen tool to sharpen my image and finish the tutorial off.

          I think this was a great and very helpful tutorial.  It was descriptive and its use of pictures helped me out.  The only problems I ran into were experimenting with the effects until i found something I liked.  This was fairly challenging but overall I think I did a great job with this tutorial!

links to images: Grass Landscape, Cityscape

Social Awareness Poster

In my graphic design class, I recently created a social awareness poster against smoking.  I used two tutorials along with a picture taken off of the internet to create my poster.  Here is the original image I took off of the internet...

I felt that this image would be good because the dark background is easy to work with.  I decided to create smoke in photoshop and make text in the smoke using the smoke type tutorial from Abduzeedo.com.  I decided to put the word "poison" in smoke text and put it as if it were coming from the cigarette to illustrate the dangers of smoking.  This was a very tough and time consuming task but I was able to complete it because of the very descriptive tutorial.  To create the smoke text, I applied a blur and a wave to the word poison.  I then created a background with a cloud affect. I erased most of the clouds except for the ones around the word poison.  Finally, I downloaded smoke brushes from Qbrushes.com to add extra smoke to the text.  I ran into trouble downloading the smoke brushes but was able use them with some help from my teacher.

The effect after using smoke text tutorial looked like this...



















After using the smoke brushes and the cloud background, my poster looked like this...

I think that the combination of the smoke texts and the smoke brushes made a cool effect.  The tutorial and the brushes helped to make a very realistic looking smoke effect, while the smoke text added a creative twist.

The final step in creating my social awareness poster was to create a banner with metallic text using the Metal Text Effect tutorial from Photoshopessentials.com.  To create the metal text effect i used many different layers along with the use of the noise, blur, shading, and gradient tools.  I faced a problem when I noticed that the tutorial I was using created a layer that covered my whole document.  With the help of my teacher I was able to figure out how to delete this layer, leaving me just with the metallic banner saying "Don't Poison Yourself".



Here is the final version of my social awareness poster...

I think my idea came out great.  My final product was very similar to the idea I had in my head.  I credit this to the extremely helpful tutorials I picked out and my in creasing skills in photoshop.  I think my social awareness poster came out very well and sends out a great  message!












link to internet image: ttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Nick_Oliveri_with_cigarette_2009-01-07.jpg

Color Theory Movie

Below is my color theory movie created for my graphic design class.  My internet sources can be found on the last slide of the video.  I learned a lot while creating this video and hope you will enjoy it!

Below is the edited version of my color theory project based on the suggestions given to me by my classmates.  It includes more transitions and better editing. I hope you enjoy it!

Logo Design Project

     During my logo design process, I started experimenting a lot with combining and molding letters together.  I also really got into putting letters into a diagonal pattern.  Out of all of these types of logos, this was by far my favorite.  I really liked the font and the way the letters fit together.  I worked with this logo until i found something that looked the most appealing and flowed the best.  I think my Z combined greatly with the center of my A, and the end of my A fit greatly with the edge of the G.

     For my name logo, I was going for a very creative and original look.  Like I said earlier, I really enjoyed experimenting with combing and molding my letters in different ways.  I decided to extend the length of the end of my Z and let the A and C rest on it.  I also noticed that the middle of the H would fit very well with the end of my Z and make for a more creative look.

     My symbol logo took me a little longer to think up and design.  At first, it took me a while to come up with a design I really liked, but with some suggestions and design research I was able to come up with the lightning bolt idea.  I figured that I could make a lightning bolt that contained the letter Z by manipulating the shape and angles of a few lines.  I put a cloud above the bolt to give it the full affect.  I ran into some trouble during the process of designing this logo but I'm happy with the outcome.