Category Archives: DesignAssignments

Go Bills!

If I hadn’t advertised it already, I am a huge Bills fan. My whole entire family is from Buffalo, New York, so naturally this comes with being a Bills fan, as well as having bleu cheese with your wings (although I also do like ranch with my wings but do not tell them I said that). So, when I saw the sports poster assignment, I thought I would try my best to do my favorite team of all time. I wanted to recreate a graphic you could see on Instagram or social media when it is time for game day. One that captures the essence of the team, as well as the sport itself. I used the colors of the team, blue, red and white, as well as highlighting the current major players that make the team what it is, such as Josh Allen, James Cook, and Khalil Shakir. I then found symbols that are associated with football and play-making. Overall, I had a lot of fun creating a graphic for a team I truly love (although I am still grieving them losing in the playoffs but it is okay, there is always next year)!

New Game! – Your story as a game!

I chose to do a design assignment for my character Krissy Ryan. I don’t know why, but I always pictured Krissy as a movie character and less of a video game character. However, I thought the prompt of making a video game home screen was really cool, and I have been inspired by other people doing this prompt so I wanted to take a swing at it. This prompt was challenging for me because I don’t play a lot of video games, and the ones I do don’t have that classic “Game Over, Play Again” screen, so I needed to look for inspiration. My goal for this assignment was to get a very basic sense of Krissy’s story (to really boil it down, she has a very dramatic change in scnery) from the home screen, while still keeping the video game look.

*****Flash Warning*****

I used Canva to create the screen, and I was messing around with the different elements they offered. I love Canva, but I often forget that you don’t have the most freedom when it comes to designing your image. If I had the skills, I would use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, but I don’t so I have to settle for Canva and whatever it has. Like I said, my goal was to show the general sense of the story from the home page, so I did a split screen of Krissy in front of her normal life and Krissy in front of the future. The image I used for the Cyberpunk future was inspired by one of the readings we did from the first week where it says the vision for Cyberpunk is “Tokyo on a bad day.” I added some glitch effects to add to the cyberpunk theme. Other than coming up with an initial concept for my home screen, the hardest part was the play button. I wanted the A to be in the symbol of a triangle, but the spacing was really hard to get just right.

I like how my home screen came out and although I still picture Krissy as a movie character, maybe this can be a video game made to market the movie. I’m not a video game fan, other than the classic Dress to Impress, but I think I would play this game!

New Tattoo Who Dis?

In the assignment Tattoos that Describe you, I did a tattoo that my character Evelyn Calico would have.

The top right corner tattoo is what Evelyn would have and its a straight spine tattoo. Evelyn is a classy gal and whilst she is a writer she also loves to read books (her favorite are Agatha Christie novels). The roses are her favorite touch to this piece because roses mean so many things. She loves how dainty they are but that they can be thorny and prickly. The sword was added to the design last minute because while she was waiting to get the final design she was looking at the drafts and realized that she wanted something that not only can be straight on her spine but also strong and can show her independence, so she asked for a sword to be integrated into the design. She also wanted a pop of color so she made only the flowers be colored in.

To make this assignment I scrolled through Pinterest and looked for “writer tattoo ideas” and found this one. I then imported it into Procreate for Apple and decided that I wanted to color some part of this design so I decided on coloring the roses and thorns. The assignment also stated to “make multiple copies of that, and add different color effects to each copy. Each Color is unique, and can depict different mood.” So I made multiple layers of the finished product and put them into a grid. I “alpha locked” every layer so that when I made a edit to a layer it would only affect the one selected. I added a transparent color to each layer except the top right corner to make them different colors without hindering the roses. I then played around with canvas textures and hues, each square a different adjustment type. Once I was happy with how each layer looked I had the finished product!

Contact me – Or don’t I really don’t care

This assignment is the Create Your Own Business Card. I chose to make a business card for my character Evelyn Calico. She works at the New York Times as a journalist and doesn’t really care to move up in the world. She likes where she is and will continue to work her wage and no more.

Evelyn gives very few out but when she does, its because a story has really interested her and knows she can do well with it, or a supervisor is watching her and she needs to give them out like candy according to them. The stories that Lynn looks for are stories that tend to bring controversy to the public. She likes to listen to gossip and make news out of it, but professionally of course. Her business card consists only of work contact information, she will not tolerate those who go contact her personally (i.e her personal phone, email, and landline – yes she still has one).

I made this business card using this Canva template and I made up a phone number using the area code from Montana as that is where Evelyn is originally from. To make her email I used the classic first initial and full last name email that most professional companies use. I then went to a “contact us” page on the New York Times to see what kind of email url they typically use. I then make the address be the New York Times headquarters building. I imported the New York Times font into canva to make the header and the “T” logo in the corner. Overall, Im happy with how minimalist the card ended up looking and I feel like it fits my characters overall vibe!

Destress and Color

Week 3 Assignment #1
A colorful mandala drawing.

I saw a lot of people doing this assignment, so I thought I would give it a try! I always loved coloring, because it has always been a relaxing activity I can turn to if I need to distract myself or need something to do. Especially in this specific design, the mandala, which are known to have therapeutic effects when coloring them, such as decreasing tension and anxiety and encouraging creativity. According to an article by Pine Rest Mental Health Services, the shapes and the colors chosen for the mandala can symbolize whatever the artist wants it to be. When thinking about this specific drawing, I liked the colors, since some of my favorite colors are in it, such as pink and blue. Also, the almost floral-leafy design of it was appealing since I love nature in art. Overall, I enjoyed this assignment and it was a great way to destress from my work from other classes!

A World of Color

After a very long and stressful day I had minimal motivation to do work of any kind. I was tired and groggy but knew I had to relax and get something done, but I didn’t know my assignment would consist of both. I was browsing through design assignments and the Destress & Color assignment caught my eye. It seemed fun and a good fit as it would give me a much needed mental reset. Downloaded the app and boom, there’s all of these choices and I don’t know what to choose. After a bit of browsing I went for lots of landscapes involving nature to fit with the calmness I was aiming to achieve while doing this assignment. It worked swimmingly, as I immediately got into a groove and zoned out until I was done and realized how pretty all of the pieces I had chosen were. I had a lot of fun with this assignment and was glad I could share the theme I had in my mind while selecting what to color.

Visual and Design Projects

The first two assignments were made with my character Max in mind

Max Matrix

Brave? – Assignment Bank

For this assignment, I was inspired by the game over screens when you fail a game. At first It seems you have hit a stopping point but then you look down and see try again but and you find a new way. Things aren’t over till you give up. Max has hit dead ends all her life, but she knows that It’s only over when she stops fighting. So, until then she will punch through firewalls and bodies. Photos and edit done by me. I made this using a software called Picarts using black boxes to fill in the computer screen and finding a font that fit. Took a but to maneuver it properly though.

Personal Trading Card – Assignment Bank

I decided to visualize max through a site called Picrew. Artist ne_yolk. With that and the trading card creator it was easy to bring Max to life and flesh her out a bit more. Dirty brown hair, deep dark circle, and unhealthy pale skin due to all the smog cover and being inside. My thought process was of her getting caught eating sugar to keep herself up after not sleeping all night.

Destination Poster – Assignment Bank

Images and edits by me, the image is off certain day on campus that I saw a rabbit and thought it was stunning so naturally I snapped a photo. I try to preserve small moments if I can. This was back last semester when I walked past for work and the light was hitting perfectly, I couldn’t help myself.

Week 2 assignments

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/10-Moreland-Ave-NE-Atlanta-GA-30307/35843574_zpid

This dream house is a newer house that is updated with newer electronics and appliances. This house also provides a constant source of creativity due its abstract nature. It is also in a city that is known for its creativity.

This design assignment is from the app that I downloaded to destress and color it came out better than expected. This is a very bright and colorful Japanese style building. Even though I wasn’t allowed to select the colors myself the color palette they gave me was very easy to use and allowed me to actually relax and complete this assignment.

Modern Dystopia: A Tech-Noir Book Cover

This week has been insanely busy, so trying to figure out which assignments would fit into my schedule was quite the challenge, especially figuring out how to incorporate the theme. However, when I saw the opportunity to design a Noir book cover, it was perfect. I felt comfortable in my Canva abilities, I know book covers, I could incorporate it into the theme, and it wasn’t a large time commitment. I decided to keep it simple and to the point. It’s not very involved and if I had more time during the week outside of my other classes and my job, I probably could’ve produced something more detailed and showcasing more of my abilities, however it unfortunately was not in the cards this week for me. I thought it best to create something I felt just okay about than to not create anything at all.

Fictional book cover titled, “Modern Dystopia”

I chose to use Canva because it was a software I use regularly, so I didn’t need to set aside time to learn how to use it. Not to mention, it’s good at getting the job done with design projects of this nature; very user friendly and accessible. Again, I don’t feel super great about the finished product, but I feel good enough about it matching the theme and vibe of the class and it shows a little bit of something I’m able to do.

She’s a Full On Monet! – That’s Not It

The prompt for this assignment was to mix two movie scenes together, to change the meaning of the conversation. The original Clueless scene had Tai and Cher talking about Amber dancing with Tai’s crush. To make Tai feel better, Cher starts trashing Amber’s appearance. To change the scene, I made the subject of the conversation Regina George. While the meaning of the original conversation didn’t change, it was fun to put Regina George and Cher Horowitz, two iconic characters, together. I picked this assignment because I thought it was cool that just a little bit of editing can transform a whole scene.

Making the video involved downloading the scene of Cher and Tai at the party as well as the scene of Aaron and Regina at their Halloween party. I ran into a slight bit of trouble when downloading the scenes because the only version of the Clueless scene that didn’t have a huge watermark was without background music. I remedied this by downloading a song from the YouTube audio library and mixing it into the video and adjusting the volume. After that, the video was very easy to make. All I had to do was cut out the scenes with Amber and use the Mean Girls scene. Lastly I exported the video and uploaded it to YouTube. This was definetly one of the easier assignments, the only thing I really struggled with was coming up with an idea. I couldn’t find any scenes where there was an opportunity to change the context of the conversation. Once I thought of this idea I was very excited and got to work. Overall, I’m proud of this edit, I hope you guys like it.