Digital Self Portrait

After nearly completing my Introduction to Digital Media class, looking back I can say that my one of my favorite pieces was one that I completed in Photoshop. My digital self portrait, was the first project we had in Photoshop. I had some experience with Photoshop, but originally took that class to improve upon those skills. I may of been somewhat blind before to not knowing the full extent of that amazing program, and even now I still feel like there is so much more that I can still learn. 

When creating my self portrait, I wanted it to mostly be black and white. I wanted to use the color in a subtle matter, to accent certain parts of images. I took many photos with imagery that may be recognizable to many viewers, and wanted to make them unrecognizable.  I tried to make my eyes the main focus, by repeating them twice. Once on the portrait of my face, and then again in the background but more subtly. I didn't want the second set of eyes to take away from the first. I think my self portrait is successful because I wanted it to come off strong and bold, but subtle at the same time. These characteristics are ones I also share, shy and quite sometimes, and other times opinionated and bold. 

Online Portfolio

Today I just finished my online portfolio in Dreamweaver. My first online portfolio I made was last year, in iWeb. Even though it lacked many design elements, it was still a great learning experience. I learned a lot about a efficient web layout and how to upload my final web site through an ftp:// program. I was just talking to my design professor yesterday, and we looked at my personal identity system; with my letterhead, business card, and envelope. He was saying that I will probably want to redesign it later on, and he was right. I have already redesigned my resume, from 2 months ago, to match the look and feel of my website. After completing my second online portfolio, I already want to redesign that one as well. I think that since being a student, all of my work is a "work in progress." I know that from now, until when I graduate in a year and a half, that my portfolio book, online portfolio, and work will be dramatically different. I just keep learning so many new things, that keeps making me change and grow as a designer. 

www.denicekinney.com

The Incredibles

I recently watched the animated Pixar film, "The Incredibles." After recently learning the basics of creating a simple animation, I found this film to be more astounding that the other times I had watched it before. My character developing for my short animation didn't involve too much time because I was really only thinking about 2D. For the computer animated film, they often use a 3D animation technique. I found this image, and was amazed as to how many creative people they must have involved in the making of a full length computer animated movie. They not only have 2D sketches but also make small sculptors of characters to see how they will look in 3D. They employee over 700 people. They range from sculptors, designers, 3D computer artists, to executives and janitors. 

Flash Animation

It appears that my Flash Animation, is finally coming together. It has taken me about a month to create a 2 minute animation. I am hoping to be able to create another animation later, where I will have more time to make the animation with more detail. I learned so much from just creating a short animation, that I am hoping to have the time to come back to Flash sometime soon. 

Flash Shape Tweens

For my shape animation that we worked on in class on Wednesday, the emotion I was trying to convey was sadness. I wanted  to do so by using dark blues, and purples to convey a dark, sad, down emotion. The shapes that I used very referencing to paint dripping, water falling, and then to tears. I had used Flash before, but I had never used a shape tween. It was different than a motion tween. But one thing that I had trouble with was once I made a shape on a keyframe, and then changed it on another, and then connecting them with the shape tween, I had trouble getting the shape to do what I wanted through the change in motion. I wanted it to be rather simple, but in trying to represent, what I thought was a simple motion of paint dripping... turned out to not be so easy to portray. 

Animation

Coldplay - Yellow

I found this animation on You Tube. Its a animation done in Flash. We will be using flash on our next project,  but this animation involves so much more than  I know. I only know simple tweens and keyframes! These basics were probably used to create the animation, but it took a greater amount of time to create a 3 minute animation.

I liked this animation because it was made to go along to one of my favorite bands, Coldplay. The animation also is created with the same feel that a movie would have. The camera angle panning across a scene, the fade ins and outs. The movement of each figure is rather simple, either their eyes blinking, or hand moving. There wasn't any full body movement, which I liked. It got the message across with rather simple movements. I like the illustrative style the the figures were created in. They are stylized, with rather geometric lines. 

Computer Graphics Animation

The term computer graphics term came about to describe what was on a computer that wasn't sound or text. This started out the base for computer animation. Which is the same idea that typical 2D animation is, except for the graphics that are used to create the animation are in 3D instead of 2D. The same concepts that we learned for gif animation in class on Wednesday, is amazingly the same way in which they do computer animation. They take the 3D images, just like our simple 2D photoshop images we used for our gif animation, and move each frame after frame, slightly differently than the one before to create their animations.