Reactions to this course

I really enjoyed this course. I have always been interested and used photoshop and illustrator. Making the CD cover was a fun experience for me. I'm glad a learned the basics of Flash and web design. These skills will for sure be helpful in whatever I choose to do.

I think the lectures were superb. I think one of the best ways to improve your skills in design is to analyze amazing work that is already out there. In lecture we talked about digital media, but we were also exposed to some great work by great artists. This exposure definitely influenced my work in the lab. The youtube examples of digital media also expanded my mind as to what is possible in digital media. I think the labs were also effective. We learned step-by-step techniques in tutorial. This made it easy to get through with little complication. Our professors were very helpful with any problems we encountered.

Although the labs were done well for the most part, I don't think it is necessary for the 45 minute talk in the beginning. For instance, in lab, we would sit at the front and watch and listen to exactly what we were going to do in the tutorial. I don't feel like this is necessary - I think it is more informative to just get to the tutorials right away. This way we can have more time to play around with the applications. Ultimately I find that tutorials and playing around with the programs is the best way to learn, so if more time was dedicated to that I feel I could have mastered and understood the programs more thoroughly.

After seeing some of the innovative work in lecture and in the labs I have a much deeper appreciation for digital media. I'm now very interested in the After Effects program. Some of the work done in the program is really interesting to me and now I want to learn how to use it. Working on the projects throughout the semester has definitely given me more confidence in the ability to create. Using the knowledge I learned in this course I feel like a can make posters, CD covers, flash animations and websites a lot easier.

The most important thing I take away from this course is the knowledge of the possibilities available in digital media. Social networking, user contribution, all things new and exciting things have expanded the creative landscape in which we work. With applications that make it so easy to create and share I feel like there is a lot of opportunity in the digital world to do something unique and innovative. I think this an important perspective to have since the world is becoming shaped evermore by the digital world. With knowledge on how, why and what the web and world is changing into I feel like I am equipped to be an active and effective participant within the environment.

5 Characteristics of Web 2.0

1) Dynamic Content - an example of this 'mash-up' characteristic is Google maps and Flickr. This program combines 2 separate mediums and is constantly changing and evolving.

2) User Contribution - user contribution refers to a user's response to the web - comments on a particular media. An example of this is an Torrenting site. Before downloading a torrent, you may wish to look at the comments of the given torrent to learn if it contains any viruses or just doesn't work.

3) Social Media - Social media combines media from web users and brings it to one site. An example of this is Photobucket - a place to share your photos with anyone you wish to.

4) Online Applications - an example of this characteristic is Ryeron's 'virtual applications' where students can log in from their home and use applications like photoshop and flash

5) Harnessing Collective Intelligence - this characteristics involves the organization of information on the web. An example of this is tagging. Tagging brings common elements together, making it easier for the user to browse through particular subjects without be directed elsewhere.

Flash assignment artist's statement

Artist's Statement

Matt Hornick

I really enjoy the hybridity of music and imagery. For this Flash animation project, I attempted make my own piece that combines these two mediums.

It was one of my first times using flash, so I encountered a lot of difficulties during production. One of the my tricky things was making the buttons. Even though I only had two, the programming aspect frustrated me. I would think I followed the tutorials correctly, but they just would not do what I wanted. For instance, I would be able to click the play button but it wouldn't play the movie. I had to fool around with that for a while to get it right. Also, the button at the end to go back to start of the movie was difficult to configure.

Along with the button difficulty, I struggled to prevent the music from playing before pressing the play button. This was because the music started on the first frame. I realized that if I put the music after the play button, the song would start after pressing play. One thing I could not solve was how to have the music stop when the movie stops. At the end of the movie, everything is frozen but the music is still playing. Then when you press the go back to start button the music overlaps with the original track, which is rather annoying.

The tweening aspect of the movie I found relatively easy. The most difficult thing to do was probably the growing line in the beginning. I had to make a 'mask' to get the effect – this took a little time to figure out how to do correctly.

Overall, I really like simple animations with only a few colours, and I think I was successful in that aspect. I did not realize I was supposed to have type in my animation, and I probably would have made an entirely different movie had I known this. I had fun and learned a lot while making it, and in future productions I will try and make them a bit more interesting and interactive.

What I learned

From doing my flash assignment I learned a number of things - most of which I indicate in my artists statement. I learned how to put music into flash, how to do motion tweens, how make masks, how to make simple buttons and how to use key frames correctly. I basically learned everything about flash in this class, as I wasn't too familiar with it before this class.

I thought this poster was sort of interesting because on the word poetry. Poetry usually links together words and ideas in a small space, and this poster sort of indicate that. The letters are squished together, overlapping each other, sort of the way elements of poetry overlap each other. Other than that it is a pretty simple poster, but I think it gets the companies message across nicely.

This image uses typography effectively. The poster is promoting a scary movie, and the type goes with the theme. The red type almost looks like its dripping blood - and blood is commonly associated with death in scary movies. This choice of typography, combined with the background image create a very horrifying image.

Typography

This image uses typography in an interesting way. I think it is for some sort of animal protection group or something. The 'collage on type' effect is eye grasping. The font looks like new times roman. I don't think it is too effective as some sort of propaganda because looking at it quickly it just kind of looks like a bunch of random words together and you can only identify a theme when you look at it for more than 5 seconds.

With so much information on the web these days, we have to be careful not to consume too much 'crap' out there. I'm talking about addicting games, spending too much time on Facebook, reading non-credible articles, etc. I think it is important that modern consumers not only use the web for pure entertainment, but also for learning about and engaging in the 'real' world. Starting almost a year ago, I've made it part of my daily 'lurking' routine to watch a few videos from this educational, informative website:

http://fora.tv/

With a rapidly changing world, this website follows these changes and its effects on economics, science, spirituality, and much more.

I have an infatuation with the quick little animations in between commercials/music videos/shows on MTV. The total obscurity of them are effective in getting my attention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMhkmcvO4Qk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovLLp6qmPjY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1jbdWepq24&feature=related

I really enjoy things that 'grow'. For my interactive flash assignment I'm going to try to create some graphics like this. I will also record some music to go with the animation. The work will be a commercial for some product - a TV show, or maybe a drink or food. I think it will be a fun assignment and I am looking forward to learning new techniques in Flash to make what I want to make.

Beez be buzzin'

For this project I chose to design a CD cover. I wanted to make an interesting piece of art that attracts viewers, and is indicative of the type of music the artist plays. I've seen a lot of digital art with spirals and trees and nature and I wanted to experiment with that. There is a mixture of bright colours and dark shades to create contrast.

My target audience is anyone into indie or alternative music. This demographic would be anywhere from 16 – 35.

To make my cover, I drew from my experience with Illustrator and used some new techniques in Photoshop. I drew most of it in Illustrator (because I find it easier to draw in Illustrator). I then imported it into photoshop to do some touch ups (blur, shadows). I made good use of the rule of thirds, as nothing is in the middle of the page. It feels balanced. I incorporated an interesting use of typography. To the left of the tree is the band name (Drenkelly) in a random type format. I thought the type looked neat so I used it to make a design. I think the silhouette effect of the black tree is effective in bringing out the bright colours behind it. The tutorials given out in class and ones available on the internet helped me greatly to enhance my CD cover.

There were a number of challenges I had to deal with throughout production. Firstly, placing objects on the wrong layer was a big issue. Objects would be behind or in front of other objects that were not the way I wanted them to be, so I had to do a lot of cut and pasting to fix that. Another challenge was trying to keep image quality when exporting from Illustrator to Photoshop. This really confused me. I would export at the highest quality from Illustrator, but it wouldn't look the same in Photoshop. However, whenever I zoomed in at 100% on photoshop, it would be just as sharp as Illustrator. Any more or less and the image looked rasterized. In the end it was just an exporting issue; my settings were off. The biggest challenge in the actually design process was figuring out where to place the band name, and what type format to use. I tried putting it all over the canvas. Next time I will start with the band name in the beginning and build the design around it.

Overall I feel I accomplished my intended goal. I am satisfied with the work I did. I learned some new techniques for making spirals that are easy and fast. For future reference I will be sure to label layers. I think there is always room for improvement, and with more time I could add more things to make a more effective CD cover. I feel it is an enjoyable piece to look at, and that I would pick up the CD and have a listen. I think the target audience would be inclined to look at the CD.

I didn't learn too much from the in class critique because the professor said he didn't have anything to critique. Personally, I'm still not 100% sure about the font and placement of the band name.

So after I discovered virtual applications I did some experimenting with photoshop and illustrator. This is just one image I produced. Note the 'sans serif' font use on the word love. I also used the gradient technique for the background.

On a completely unrelated note, I can't resist posting this hilarious monologue by Dan O'brien that I found thanks to the internet. If you followed the US election campaign last year you'll find find this awesome. http://www.cracked.com/blog/an-interview-with-mccain-and-obama-in-the-year-2012

This poster uses the CRAP principle of alignment effectively.

The text is pulled to the right side of the page. This makes it easy to read and follow.

Blog Entry 2 – CRAP Principles

Photo 1 – Contrast found at http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=5759256

This photo is a great example of contrast. The photographer has used complimentary colours (blue and orange) with the ice and horizon. The use of contrast in designing in ads can be used effectively. They can make certain things stand out on a page. Contrast can also make a design more interesting to look at, which ad designers want so that viewers are drawn in and read the content of the ad.

Photo 2 – Repetition found at http://adland.tv/ooh/carrefour-malaysia-flasher-flood-red-red-stars-print-malaysia

This is a very repetitive ad. Looking at it close up each of those red dots has a yellow price inside it and an item beside it (yellow and red combination is commonly used). I think it may just be a little TOO crazy for me – my eyes get kind of lost in the image and I'm not sure where to look. If an designer is going to use repetition they should make it so it is still easy to look at.

Las Vegas

Digital Media

Before our first lecture, I felt I had a pretty knowledgeable impression of 'digital media'. The term brings to mind cell phones, Ipods, Photoshop – anything computer related. It also makes me think of the social networking phenomena that is Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and especially digital music. Through the Internet, digital media has promoted the sharing of information - be it our thoughts, music, art and so on. It's drastically changed the way we operate our everyday lives in the world, and is the reason we are now all unavoidably 'connected' to each other. We can now experience so much more – music, food recipes, clothing styles and a million other things with influence from all over the globe. It's forced businesses to adapt to a new, digitalized environment. It's posed new challenges for laws all around the globe... the list goes on. After our first lecture my initial thoughts weren't changed but I definitely saw some things I hadn't before. The building graffiti really caught my attention – I'd never seen stuff like that before. The lecture really just opened up my mind into whats possible with digital media, and got me excited to start making some things in class.

RTA students should be taking this digital media course because we have to. The future is digital. Everything is digital. Even if after this course I never take digital media again, it will for sure come up somewhere along the line either during school or in work. Lets say I'm producing a movie or trying to to build a record company. I will need a basic knowledge of how to build a website to promote myself, or at least know how much time it's going to take someone else to make one. And within that website I'll need some interesting logo and design, and have to understand what sort of styles and trends are attractive to the target audience. As digital media becomes more and more integrated into society, the more important it is for us to know how to manipulate it and how to use it to our advantage.

Yes, McLuhan was absolutely right. In this cyber-connected world we can learn about what our friends up to on an hourly basis, we can know a school, a phone number, a best friend of a total stranger at the click of a button – the effect is a more sociable environment. We know more private details about people than we ever could have in the past. But also with this new medium we become vulnerable to things like information overload, wherein our brains have trouble digesting the mass amount of advertisements, updates and so on and therefore the medium becomes ineffective. Another important part of studying and practising digital media is to learn how to make our work effective, so that the viewer is able to receive the message effectively and is not clouded by too much information.