Week 15 Final Part II

Alex Barone

Craft: Using blogger, create a blog that grabs the viewers interest. Clean well formated design. This blog is easy to understand, striking, but without being overpowering. Composition: Black background with red, white, and blue lettering. The lettering stands out among the black background allowing for clear and visible words. Some other blogs the background overpowers the dialogue. The black also allows for a blank slate with which her images can be viewed. Concept: Lure people into viewing her blog and staying. To boldly grab attention and subtly direct it toward the image.

Mandy Schwanitz

Craft: Create a simple blog using blogger detailing the assignments covered throughout this semester. Composition: Plain white background, with a faded image at the top. Red black and blue lettering. Clean crisp well segmented Concept: This is a light companion to the art pieces created in class. It is a no frills bare-bones website designed to compliment and support. It is easy to look at which is important in a website. The only thing I wish there was more of were the artists pieces but they are linked onto the website so it works.

Week 15 Final

My Choices for Best Viscom Blogs

Chona Mangubat

Craft: She gathered twenty five Lincoln era pictures and twenty five modern era pictures to create a mashup. She the took Lincoln's head and layered it over the body of another person looking out onto Chicago. She then removed the color from the image. This was done in photoshop. Composition: This picture grabs my attention through the use of colors on the website. On the red background the image of a modern Lincoln pops. If this image as placed on any other color template it would not have the same effect. Art is not only how one makes a piece but how one displays said piece. Top marks. Concept: The modern Lincoln! I love how he is not looking into the city but staring out over the lake. For me it seems the lake is the same as it was in his time. For me the lake is a symbol of where we were and where we are going as a city and a nation. It seems apt that the modern Lincoln would gaze over it. He is gazing both into the past and into the future.

Zach Kekelik

Craft:
Used blogger and various applications to create the best laid out and engaging blog in the class.

Composition:
Bold colors that feed off one another, open light layout that pulls the viewer through, fun and creative images that capture the attention and make a viewer want to stay on your site.

Concept:
Create a fun and dynamic blog that would attract people to his artwork and display it in a inspired way. It kept me engaged the entire time I was on it.

Katie Dupree

Craft:

Used blogger to create an engaging website. Composition: Cool colors create a mellow backdrop which allow for the images on this site to pop. This is the only blog that uses this template. The blog could use more images. The comments about her pieces were very helpful and in-depth. The blog creator displays a solid knowledge of design. Concept: Create a blog that would enhance but not overshadow the artist's work. This blog is a nice compliment to the pieces.

Week 14-New Website

Click Here to see new website

Assignment:

We had to create and publish a new website for our art work!

Craft:

I used as plain black design as a background. This I feel makes my work stand out better than on a cluttered busy webpage.

Composition:

I placed each piece on its own page. That way the image is the center focus of the viewer.

Concept:

To complete a website for VisCom highlighting my artwork. Most everyone else in the class created busy webpages that look awesome but their work gets lost in the page. I wanted to create a plain webpage so that my work is at the forefront.

Week 13

Assignment:
To create a unique website using Iweb application in the computer lab.

Craft:
I got the first page done. The second page I was not able to complete. So my work was way below par.

Composition:
I chose the black background because this is an art website and as an artist you want your artwork to stand for themself. I wanted nothing to distract from my pieces as some of the more brightly colored templates would have done. I am attempting to make the site as plain and easy to navigate as possible because as more junk that gets added to a site, I have found the quicker it is for people to lose interest.

Concept:
I have conflicting intrests. For the class we are supposed to create a site that is an individual expression of our personallity but as a designer I want to make a site that is more distant yet clearer to understand and makes my work pop. To do that I need to make the site as plain as possible and mearly use the site as a frame for my work. I have the rest of the week to play with the site to figure out specifically what I want to accomplish with it.

Week 12

Last frame of Comic

Assignment:

Put the final touches on our comic.

Craft :

I added some dialogue to the last panel on the first page. I deleted the panel explaining my character waiting's actions since it just seemed to add confusion to the story and I couldn't find a way to make it work.

Composition:

I still like the green and red color. I feel that the paneling worked best the way it was originally. I tried to streamline the flow of the piece.

Concept:

Same as before. Girl gives a boy her heart. He breaks it. She still loves him anyway.

Week 11

Assignment- 

We had to create a comic strip using a program called comic life from the images we drew.

Craft-

Monday we had a critique. I am not really sure what to change. I had about half of the comments tell me they love it and the other half told me they didn't understand the story. They did not tell me what they didn't understand in the story though so I have no idea what needs to be fixed.

Concept-

A girl wraps her heart to give to a boy she likes. (The heart she wraps is patched because it has been broken in the past like most people's hearts have.) She travels to the boy's house to give him her present. He is waiting for her. She gives him the present and he is excited. He runs off to give her a present from him. He has a choice between his box(a mutual exchange of feelings) or a mallet which represent the destruction of the relationship. He choses the mallet and destroys her heart.

Composition

I am going to try and make my story more clear to the audience. I believe I will take out a scene which I believe adds to the confusion in the comic. I will add dialogue to the earlier scene to make the comic move more smoothly. I don't want to change it to much however because half the people liked it as is and to be honest so do I. 

Week 10

Assignment: 

 We have to show and work on our comic strip of one person traveling, one person waiting and the package for the other. Also had to find an example of a comic we liked online. 

Craft:  

My story is eleven frames long. It was determined by the group that I need to add more detail to the background on three scenes and to change the title scene. The colors I used were red,(female present) yellow,(male's present) and green( for the background). I found they stood out the best and worked for my story. 

Composition: 

Everyone understood my story. It flowed nicely. I do agree with needing more detail on the three scene's.  I liked my coloring but the audience wants more tonal change so I will have to add that also.  

Concept:  

The concept was to try and add the details to the story that were missing from my rough draft. I believe I succeeded in that. Everyone understood what was going on and why  I choose the colors I did for the story. I am going to take the groups advice and follow through on adding more detail and tonal changes in color.

Week 9

Assignment-

Drew 9 8X10 pictures of our storyboard and got into groups of three to critique them.

Craft-

Drew nine 8X10 pictures in number two pencil on computer paper. I received excellent advice on how to improve my comic strip. I will add a scene at the beginning of the girl putting her heart into the gift box and I will add a scene on why the boy is so heartless and evil.

concept-

To depict an end of a relationship in cartoon form, a boy breaking a girls heart.

composition-

My group easily understood the message I was trying to get across. They enjoyed the drawings and suggested I perhaps clean up the drawings a little and make them darker.  

Special Edition: Lipstick and Dynamite

This documentary about the first women wrestlers was fascinating. The life of the Fabulous Moolah intrigued me the most. Even at her age she is still keeping on with the profession that she loves. That is truly inspiring. The film was artfully shot. The only complaint that I have toward the film was that it started to lag toward the end. Overall I greatly enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

Week 8

Assignment:
Work on the comic book assignment

Composition:
I am having a little bit of an issue with the comic book assignment. I want to draw the comic however my drawing style is not gritty enough for what I want to portray in the comic. I either have to change my story to a lighter subject matter so I can draw it properly, or plan a photo shoot for the grittier story.
Craft:
A pencil and some paper. I first went about figuring out how I want the characters to look however how I imagined the story in my head was not translating well onto the paper. I did a second comic with a lighter story and then I am going to choose which I like best.

Concept:
The original comic is about a broken marriage(the one I will have to shoot). The second comic is a lighter take on broken hearts.

Also final for mash-up was turned in:

Week 7

Assignment:

A Story of one person traveling, one person waiting, and a package from one to the other.

Craft:

Microsoft Word and my imagination.

Concept:

After a week of Lifetime movies, I thought it would be fun to have the woman fight back instead of always running away from the problem.

The Story:

The story begins with a man and a woman "together" in bed. The man's cell phone rings. It is a phone call from his wife. He checks his phone. The man promptly dresses, thanks his mistress, and excuses himself to go home. Before he arrives at home the man stops at a florist to pick up some flowers. Smugly, he walks up to the front door with the flowers in hand. As he turns the knob, BLAM! His wife disheveled and emotional is sitting on a wooden chair, smoking gun in hand. The man was shot in the chest with buck shot. The cheater falls to the floor. Flowers and blood are everywhere. FIN

Lincoln Extra Credit

The 200 Lincoln's Exhibition was interesting.

I went with Beau, Sony and Jason. They really seemed to enjoy it.

Here are some pictures of the event.

Week 6

Assignment:

Turn in first draft, and work on concept.

Craft:

I took a bunch of photos of my boyfriend. I told him to act out different emotions he felt but usually never expressed. I took the images and combined them to create the mash-up piece. I used the magic wand, layer masks and the eraser. I also resized two of the images to be smaller in the piece. 

Composition:

I chose these photos because I feel they directly reflect the frustration felt by not being able to express yourself. I shrunk the two images along side the main one to express the inner self, or your conscious. 

Concept:

After my meeting with Prof. Peck I had to came up with a concept. He said to use this as a chance to say something I otherwise would not be able to express. I have never had a problem saying what I feel but I know a bunch of people that for various circumstances cannot say or act on their feelings. I wanted to 

show their inner turmoil. I wanted to give them a voice since they cannot find their own.

Week Five

Assignment:
Come up with a fun unique concept. Take twenty five pictures that we will use to create the concept piece. Work on a mash up with two or more photos that we have taken.

Craft:
Using my Olympus FE-210, I went shooting tiny things with my Macro settings. I took pictures of fruit, bowls of milk, money, and other small objects. I also shot people, who I used either an action shot or landscape. I wanted my people all in focus and I want to be able to capture their actions.

Composition:
For my photos, I try to get the best color possible. I like bright vibrant colors, strong contrast, and powerful lines. For these photos, I used bright lighting to bring out the detail for the later mash-up.

Conception:
The concept I am going for in my eventual mash-up is simple pleasures in the little things. I want to take things we see everyday and add something extraordinary to them. Like for a bowl of milk, I want to add people lounging about the edge of the bowl in swimsuits and on floaties in the milk. Have people scale(mountain climb) a persons sleeping face. Have someone ski down a powdered donut. There is so much I can do with this concept that I don't have to worry about difficulty coming up with an mash-up. I just need happy people and small objects.

Week Four

Assignment:

Working on the final product for the Mash-up.



Craft:

I took the photo I had of an empty field, and tinted it blue. I than overlaid a photo of a blues singer on top of the field picture. With the blues singer, I created a layer mask. I turned the opacity to 100% and proceeded to clear out everything I didn't want in the final photo. I than changed the opacity on my soft tipped paint brush to 50% to give the singer a ghostly feel. I then selected and added two slaves working in the field. (On the suggestion of the class I made them larger and moved them more toward the front) I think for today to complete the assignment I will add more musicians to the piece.

Composition:

I am sticking with the blue color scheme because it is the only color that I felt best expressed the mood I am trying to accomplish in my piece. The slaves are in black and white to express the ghosts of our past. The singer is semi-transparent because he is channeling the spirit of those ghosts through his music. I am going to add a glow to the slaves and more musicians to drive home the meaning of the piece in the coming class.

Concept:

I gave up on my free standing sculpture and this piece is the result of that. In both pieces, I wanted to show how the past and the present aren't two separate entities. What happens in the past has a direct effect on who we are today and who we become tomorrow. We still face the same struggles as our ancestors did.
In this piece, I wanted to show how the mournful songs of the slaves directly influenced modern music whether it is Blues, Hip-hop or Rap.

Week Three

Assignment:
We had to create a Mash-up/Collage of at least one Lincoln Era Image and one of our own. I did one Phototshop piece and one free-standing sculpture.

Craft:
For the Photoshop piece, I selected the two images. I then adjusted the color in the Flag Photo to match the Lincoln photo. I adjusted Lincoln, resized him, and created a layer mask so I could take out the background without destroying the original image.
For the sculpture, I selected a few Lincoln pieces and a few contemporary pieces. I adjusted the color in photoshop(Lincoln images red and my images blue). I than printed and taped them to the hat of Abraham Lincoln. (The final piece will have it better attached.)

Composition:
I chose to do a sculpture because I knew it would stand out in a class full of flat images. My photoshop piece if I were to redo it I would get a clearer wormseye shot of the tank and a flag in the background. That way when I put Lincoln in the photo it looks as though we are looking up toward the greatest commander-in-chief our country has ever known.

Concept:
For the sculpture, I wanted the inside of the hat to represent the "real" Lincoln. I put pictures of him as a young man, with his family, and finally as president inside the hat. The hat represents the "Lincoln the Idol" who has lost touch with the real man. That shows Lincoln in the mass culture. The images on the outside of the hat are to represent the modern times and how we as a society still face the same challenges as Lincoln did in his time.
If you want you could say that we need to spend less time glorifying the idol and more time focusing on the man if our society is to learn and advance from those problems that haunted Lincoln as well as us.

Week Two

Assignment:

For Visual Communications, we were asked to collect twenty five Lincoln Era photographs and twenty five photographs from our own era(ones that we have taken).

Craft:

For the Lincoln Era photos, I did a search on Google high resolution images. I also visited various government websites dedicated to Lincoln. For the photos taken in the present era, I whipped out my Olympus digital camera and started snapping images that would fit perfectly for the piece I wish to create.

Composition:

I chose this Lincoln Era image as one of my favorites because it looks as though he just woke up. It is a reminder that even icons are still human.

The image above is one I took at the VFW. It's still raw and unedited but it is one of my favorites. It reminds me of how far we have gone as a nation, a large part in thanks to the work Lincoln did.

Concept:

My concept for this assignment is going to be different than my classmates. I am still doing a collage just not a Photoshop one. What I want to do is to find and incorporate the images I have found and taken into a Lincoln style hat. The inside of the hat will consist of images of the Lincoln era. This is to show how the Lincoln the man has been over shadowed by Lincoln the myth. The outside will show the images I have taken now. The outside images will show how far we have come as a nation, and how far we still need to go. We'll see how this goes. I have found it incredibly difficult to find a hat, so I may have to make one.

If I am unable to do my original plan I will probibly mix these two. Just because I will find it hilarious to see a pissed-off looking Lincoln riding a tank.

Week 1

Assignment-
Create a blog for visual communications.

Craft-
Went to visual communications Monday. Was told by the professor to create a blog. Tried to create the Gmail account in the class room. Google told me I was a spam computer. Went home after class.
Procrastinated Tuesday.
Wednesday, I drove two and a half hours in the snow to my first class. Missed that! Figured for the next three hours I'm stuck at school, I may as well do the VisCom blog. Created Gmail account. Signed up for blogger.com. Now typing first post.

Composition-
Photo:I selected this photo because it is the only one I have of myself on the computer. I'm not a big social website person. I have a total of five photos on Facebook. I liked this photo the best because of the colors and the person standing next to me.
Template: I decided on this template for two reasons. The first is that a computer screen is an over glorified light. Staring at any light for an extended period of time will hurt your eyes. Black lessens the impact of the computer light on the eyes. I wanted to pick something that is going to be easy on the eyes. The second reason is that this is an Art blog. The background should be something simple and muted to make the pieces stand out more. This template was the most subdued, therefore there is no distractions to my work.

Concept-If I had a soap box what would I tell the world?
My answer could be an entire blog in itself. I will try to keep it short. If I could tell the world one thing I would tell them to pay attention to the world around them.

The media which is supposed to educate the masses on the world is a joke. We are engaged in two wars(Iraq, and Afghanistan) Our economy is missing two trillion dollars that no one knows where it is. The U.S. borders are nonexistent. Violent crime is on the rise. Globally nationalistic racism is on the rise. Most of Americas infrastructure was built in the 1950s and will be failing in the next couple of years. Droughts in the South East and Western U.S. are threatening our way of life. Global warming, and the inevitable global cooling that will follow will destroy millions of lives. All that we hear from the media, however is how Britney Spears shaved herself bald, how to make a Caesar salad, or who is pet of the week. The real stories are buried in the papers. I'm sorry but to me the millions of lives and future generations impacted by the decisions that we must make is more important that Paris Hilton's junk hanging out for the world to see.

Instead of paying attention to the world, people shut done. They immerse themselves in something else. Whether it's drugs, video games, drinking to excess, or food; people would rather turn the world out than take it in and try to change it. The public, by non-involvement leave it up to those who messed it up in the first place. For God's Sake people do something! Even if it is the wrong action at least you can say you made an effort! That you tried. When it is time to go fade into the oblivion you will at least know that you've done everything you can.