Give it a Context

Recently, class had just completed an Image Editing project where we were set various tasks centered around altering RAW files that we ourselves had taken. It ranged from changing colour balance to global and local editing. At the end of the project, we were asked to take one of our RAW files and create a poster out of it. We had completely free reign with this, so we could do anything we wanted, the downside was that we only had a week for this new poster. 

During the previous Photography project, most of images that I had taken were macro, so it wasn't too easy to come up with ideas. I had thought about doing something natural related, perhaps making a poster for the RSPCA or the WWF (Wild Life, not Wrestling) In the end I came up with the idea of making a parody version of the popular game, Angry Birds. I did a little research into what sort of typography was used on the real posters and got hold of the font which helped make it look more plausible. I drew on tiny faces and matched them up to the focusing in the photo. I finished up by adding in store logos and a website URL for a more authentic look.

A Story of Love

On The 9th of October, award-winning Photographer, Natalie Martin (http://www.storyoflove.co.uk), joined our HNC Visual Communications class and gave an insightful presentation into how she works and the kind of equipment she uses. She talked about lighting and showed examples of her work, which backed up the importance of natural light within portrait photography. Shortly after her presentation, Natalie assigned us the task of taking portraits of each other, which she herself would judge. I paired up with Ashley and together we went out looking for good light.

My final and winning photo as judged by Natalie.

The initial start of the task proved to be quite difficult because the weather was grey and that meant that a lot of natural light was lost. We both tried taking photos of each other facing windows, to try and get some of the remaining light, but for me personally, it wasn’t working out so I decided to move from the idea of a body shot, to something a little closer. One thing I have noticed within portrait photography is the emphasis on the eyes. They are always the focal point and really set a mood within the image. I decided to pursue that route and tried to find some light that could make Ashley’s eyes “pop”. We wandered around the college together trying out different forms of light and it was only until we entered the Union, that I noticed an overhead light that was a little softer in strength than some of the others. I carefully had Ashley position underneath the light and look up at an angle so that it reflected in the upper area of her eyes. This to me, made them look bright, full of energy and most importantly, complimenting. When I got back to the computer, I found some of the colours within my photos a little distracting, so I converted my chosen final image to black and white to help bring the focal point back on the subject. I further edited the image by cropping out unnecessary background space, which also helped define the composition of my final photo.

An article was also written for the Borders College website: http://borderscollege.ac.uk/news-and-events/students-learn-to-be-picture-perfect/

The Final Element

A while ago I posted that for a project, we were asked to design book covers for 4 different natural disasters. At that point, I already had my cover images finished, all that was left was to create typography. For each individual cover, I wanted to make typography that corresponded with with the actual theme. So for example, for Flood, I wanted text that could look like it was underwater and have a sense of movement. Earthquake would be broken up and cracked, just like the real life counterpart. I did however have to also include sub headers, which I tried to keep consistent through every cover so they looked more like a series, rather than individual books. Complimentary colours were also considered. These are the final designs, which by the class judgement, were effective.

History in Colour

I posted this on Facebook and I thought it was amazing how some people had accurately worked to restore colour into old black and white photos. A pleasure to look through!

View the complete Gallery

Back to Black

Today was a really good opportunity to go out and take a walk over some previously unexplored hills. I took my 85mm lens with me in hopes of finding subject matter for my Photography assessment next week. Whilst out, I noticed that the weather kept on changing and being out on a higher ground, you can see just how much clouds block out the sun of areas below. I decided to try and capture some of this by purposely underexposing my shots. Of course, with the light constantly changing, I had different effects. Here are some of the better ones I had from today.

I really like how the sun is angled in this and the shadow of the Eildon's makes it look like the town is lit up.

Personally I find this boring, though it may appeal to someone (probably on Facebook)

I think this has to be my favourite of the day. I will agree with anybody that telephone poles in the country side are a bit of a distraction from nature, but I really like the way they fade off into the distance, giving additional depth to the area. I also like that the further I had walked, the hills had become somewhat hidden in sun glare.

While not the greatest of subject matters, I do like the leading lines here and the way the metal reflects by the sun, adding contrast to image. The detail in the wood also stands out due to the power of the sun too.

The reason I took this was simple; I liked the shadow cast by the tree. Quite a nice tone change between the light and darks.

Playing around with depth of literally a field. For me, I liked the idea that by having the distance out of focus, it almost blended the landscape into one and made it look semi continuous. I think maybe I should have edited out the black blob middle right however, I find it a tad distracting.

This tree on its own really stood out to me. It was old, crooked and branching off all over the place. It reminded me of the White Tree of Gondor from Lord of the Rings, overlooking the land. The hill behind myself helped provide even more shadow, so it stood out quite prominently against the town back drop.

Going Elemental

In my Visual Communications class, one of our current projects is to design 4 book covers with Tornado, Earthquake, Volcano and Flood as the themes. They are allowed to be any colour you wish, the only stipulation is that they cannot be representational. It was harder than expected to break away from doing something typical, but during the class discussion, my designs were well received and considered effective. 

These were made in Adobe Illustrator and then further edited in Adobe Photoshop. Initial designs and ideas were in a sketchbook. I tried to keep my ideas within a simple consistent theme, using only basic shape, line and colour to portray each disaster.

Can you guess which is which without looking at the file name?

It finally arrived!

After almost a year of waiting, Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo finally made it into my hands! This isn't on the shelves yet but as I provided work for the book, I was able to get one of the first factory prints from the USA. Here are some shots of the book itself!

Photography!

One of my current classes for Visual Communications is Photography and we have been asked to choose a theme in which to expand on. Last year in Art & Design, I got quite into detail during the Location Photography unit and wanted to expand on it further, so for this project I'm hoping to delve back into detail, coupled with nature. It might sound boring, but nature is pretty much anything that isn't man made, which leaves the options wide open...I just need to think of the ideas.

Yesterday we had an exercise where we went down to the river as a class to take photos. This didn't go too well for me because I was completely uncomfortable using a bridge camera. Today was different however and with my own camera in hand, I did a much better job and came back with some pretty nice images. A few didn't really fit my theme but it was good practice regardless as I haven't had much opportunity since being back at college to do any photography.

A few of these were purposely set up. I did get a little bit messy, especially when pulling the berries from the tree (a few exploded on me *sob*) I did edit these in class but I feel that they are better now that I got a chance to work on them at home. I believe they have a more gloomy autumn feel now that I re-approached them.

This final image I liked because of the relation between the colour of the trees and the colour of the car. Usually green is an overpowering colour in photography, but I feel in this instance it almost sets the mood.

Back into the swing of things

With College closely creeping upon me, I feel now is the time to start getting creative again. The summer is a great opportunity to get out and do things we otherwise don't have the time for during a usual term, however more often than not, we fall into a lazy routine and stop being creative. That's what has happened to me at least, further hindered by pulling a muscle in my neck which left me in agony for days.

Anyway, today I went out with a fully charged camera and went about trying to see if I could find anything interesting to capture. Unfortunately, when I got home, everything I had taken was overpowered by the dreaded green, so I pretty much discarded a few hundred images. 

All wasn't lost though. I did manage to keep one image that seemed to work quite well, even if it was a typical nature-type shot.

40mm f/2.8 ISO100 1/1000s

Also on the cards is redesigning my website: something I've been wanting to do for a while. I've been looking into WordPress as my back-end system, so that I can easily update pages without having to go into every single page and editing the HTML/CSS. It should be good practice to get back into design ready for my new course next month.

Fin

Last year I remembered seeing that some of the second years had written posts on their blogs, summing up the year and writing about how it went. I thought it'd be nice to do something similar!

BTEC Art & Design, where do I begin? I went into the course looking to further my creativity and expand on my artistic abilities. I wasn't quite sure what I actually wanted out of the course. Did I want to be a painter? Did I want to create art that told the world how I really felt or did I just want to find myself? These are a few things I often wondered during the length of the course. 

The first year of the course was exciting. I was meeting new people, exploring the history of art and more importantly, breaking out of a shell I had been stuck in for many years. I looked forward to every Friday because I knew we had printmaking; something I really enjoyed learning about! I didn't expect that there would be so much work required on an art course and that often led to a lot of stressing out. I think aside from printmaking, my favourite unit during the first year had to be Fine Art. I wasn't hugely into painting and I didn't really push it as far as I could have, but I enjoyed painting and I had never even tried Oil Paint prior to that unit. I was pleased with my final pieces and looking back, I feel I could have done something bigger with a bit more craziness to it. Maybe that's just Lucinda's style rubbing off on me!

The second year of the course was a little bit more relaxed, well after Christmas at least. Prior to Christmas, I was still in "First Year" mode and still over-thinking everything, stressing out over what was needed and so forth. I came back from the holidays and adapted a more care-free mentality. I didn't see the point in stressing out over the projects. Sure, I was in college to learn and progress forward, but I wanted it to be good and fun too. Cutting out the negative parts of college helped greatly with this and in doing so, my days became more enjoyable  I won't lie though, college can be really draining, even when you are just sitting around yapping and drinking coffee! More often that not, I was knackered! While I did initially have a negative view on the unit, I did actually enjoy Paper-making (except when the table was being hogged for hordes of pointless paper!) my final piece came out exactly as I had hoped, though again, I wish I could have pushed it a little further. I always enjoy Photography and I knew I could have done a lot more with the unit, I just feel awkward with photographing people because people generally don't like to have their photograph taken.

I must admit, I was a little nervous when it got closer to the end of the year. Everybody seemed to be stressing out over their work but the only thing that worried me was actually getting it printed. Honestly, I was more bricking it for the exhibition. I've never done anything like that before so I didn't know what to expect. Part of me thought I had to do a massive presentation in front of a mass of people! It was actually a pretty fun event and it was cool to meet my classmates friends and parents. I may of had one too many glasses of wine to drink, maybe that helped. I was really pleased that Kirsty won the Artist's Award because she progressed well this year and found out exactly what she wants to do. Alice and Ivy both winning an award was greatly deserved too, though I'd have personally liked to have seen Rosie and Lucinda win something also. The joint-Student of the Year award thing was pretty lame. It had zero logic behind it and I feel it was only done to please both sides of the class. Even myself getting a set of fancy sketchbooks was over the top.

Anyway, enough about that. Overall, the course was enjoyable and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to pursue a creative future. I've met lots of great people on this course, some I never want to lose contact with. Some I couldn't wait to see the back of. I'm definitely going to miss getting up at 7am (nope) and spending all day at college, wasting months doing nothing and rushing everything at the last minute. In all seriousness though, I will miss the thought-provoking discussions that were in and out of the class room, being exposed to new things and even life itself. BTEC Art & Design has taught me many things, some not even related to art and while I sometimes had a difference of opinion with my tutors, I couldn't have asked for better. 

Niall & Siobhan, you guys are what defines the course and makes it what it is. You are so different from each other, yet have this passion that you want to share with everybody. I've never seen that before and I doubt I'll see it again. Seriously from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

To anyone who may read this and is thinking about doing an art course, here is my advice to you:

• Don't over-think your projects so much. Follow the guidelines and do EXACTLY what YOU want to do within them. 

• Research is very boring but it has to be done. Once it's out of the way, you can get on to the practical work. Go wild.

• There is no limit to what you can produce. Don't be scared of something being too big! You're allowed!

• Don't waste your printing allowance on 50 pages of the same image. Fit as many pictures as you can on a single sheet of A4. You'll save money this way!

• Don't buy crappy Spray Mount! The difference between a £4 can and a £10 can is huge!

• Make sure you have the basics: Scissors, Glue Sticks and at least a Pencil. You'd be surprised  how many people still couldn't manage that!

• Most importantly: Keep an open mind! You will encounter all types of crazy stuff!!

If only I could have spoken to my past self...

FMP Additions

For my Final Major Project, I have created a fictional brand for an online movie streaming company. In addition to my website, posters, media player and smart phone application, I have put together a business card which I find to be simple, yet effective. I didn't want to include too much information on the front of the card because this cards purpose is more about promotion rather than a personal contact card. On the back I decided to add a QR code. Curiosity never killed any cats, right?

Final Major Project: Update

For my Final Major Project I have been designing an online movie streaming company, known now as SOCIALSTREAM. The project initially started off very slowly because I felt that I couldn't progress without a name, which meant that I couldn't create a logo. Thankfully, as time went on and more ideas were tried, a final outcome was decided on. I do think that it could be improved on but what it is, it serves the purpose.

Going into this project, I thought it would be a bit pointless as I was certain I wouldn't learn anything. I also didn't feel as motivated because this is the type of work I would usually do for a client. Thinking up how everything should work was challenging and isn't something that is usually left to the designer.

Over the past few weeks I have been spending days and days in Adobe Illustrator and during that time I have ran into many obstacles, which required a little research to over come. Because of that, I have picked up on a few new techniques which benefit my workflow quite a lot and for that I'm quite happy. 

Aside from designing mock website pages and the above logo, I also wanted to expand on the idea and create a mock Android/iOS application for Smart Phones. I was able to get it onto my phone and take a shot that shows how it would look if in use. I think it looks pretty legitimate!

Invitation Card

So the time has finally come to reveal my somewhat-finalized invite card for this years Borders College Annual Art & Design Exhibition. There is just one problem though; I cannot decide which colour to go with! Ideally (if mine were to be picked) I would want around 3-5 variations in colour, just to spice things up.

The design of the card is loosely inspired by an advertisement image that I saw on Asos.com. The original image was simple, yet had a retro feel to it: something I had remembered and wanted to expand on. I experimented around with different fonts and settled on the three currently in use. I think they work well together. I had another idea that I would try and create a map, so that visitors to the exhibition could be directed easily to the right place. This later became the reverse side of my invitation card and while it doesn't follow the style of the front too closely, I think it's clear and straight to the point.