Darby's Digital Designs

Our final assignment for class was to create an original animation. I am a huge Disney fanatic so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to incorporate Disney. I found images (labeled for reuse) of Cinderella’s Castle, Tinkerbell, Peter Pan’s shadow, and a Mickey balloon. I wanted Tinkerbell to fly across the screen and the balloon to fly away, as is a common occurrence in Disney. Lastly, the words “Happily Ever After” appear at the end of the animation as a nod to my favorite Disney fireworks show. Overall, I’m pleased with the animation and this is a small detail, but if you look closely, the balloon says “Disneyland” because I was unable to find a fair use image of a Disney World balloon.

Through a Service Learning opportunity, our class created posters for an event Anne Arundel Community College holds each year, called the Global Giving Market. This year is the 15th year the event has been held and it focuses on fair trade artisanship. One person’s poster design will be chosen to be the advertisement material.

First, we created handdrawn thumbnails of six ideas of posters.

After receiving feedback, I selected two to make into comps. Part of the client request was using the marketing colors. Although I did incorporate them in the second comp, they are not obvious enough and the gradient background, while fun, is not a strong decision. Thus, I decided to further edit the blue and red comp.

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After receiving additional feedback, I changed the font and added in some images of products that have been sold at the market in the past, and switched the logo and fine print to the left side. I also added a light texture to the background.

For the multimedia piece, I included the informational paragraph, logisitcal details, and slogan as well as two images. I did not include the texture in the multimedia piece, but based upon feedback it would have made it a stronger piece. Overall, I’m happy with how the poster turned out and wish my classmates luck for whose poster is chosen!

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To further hone Photoshop skills, we were asked to select a fine artist, some examples of his/her artwork, and then manipulate a portrait of the artist to resemble their style. I chose Wayne Thiebaud, who I studied in my undergraduate painting course. Thiebaud says he is not a pop artist, but his work depicts the “Americanness” of every day objects like cakes, ice cream, cones and dessert trays. His style is characterized with thicker brushstrokes, strong shadows, and creamy color schemes.

The three works of his I chose were “Dessert Tray,” “Girl with Ice Cream Cone,” and “Cake Rows.” The Girl helped me see how he handled human subjects while the other two are more typical of his best known works.

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I wanted to include his cake rows in some way, so I decided to select one piece of cake and make the background of his portrait like a wallpaper. Some of my classmates suggested that I could have made it a pattern on his sweater, so that is another potential. I also used an oil paint filter to create brush strokes across the image and inlcluded some black outlines around the body similarly to how Thiebaud handled his own human subjects. The outlines were mildly successful, but using a laptop without a mouse made it hard to be very precise with the thin line. I also chose to map out specific color portions of his face to flatten the colors, and while I’m unsure how I would do it differently, it’s the weakest aspect of this piece.

For this assignment, I was tasked with choosing an image and then transforming it to make 6 different variations of a digital kaleidoscope. I started with an image of a succulent. Who doesn’t love a nice succulent plant to bring in some greenery?

Next, I began creating my six different variations. These were all accomplished in different ways by adding adjustment layers and manipulating the transfer modes from “normal” to things like “dissolve” or “darken.” Overall, I was happy with these, particularly the first and last ones which seem like the succulent is electrified.

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For this project, I created 6 thumbnails of potential postcards, made 2 vector comps, and then finalized their designs. Ultimately, I chose San Francisco and Washington, D.C. as my two destinations.

If I would change things about the final designs, I would add more cherry blossom trees, or not have them mixed in with regular trees, and try to add some more dimension to the water in San Francisco.

Happy Friday! Today I’m sharing a wallpaper pattern I made using Typesets in Adobe Illustrator. By using the letter “Q,” I was able to create a repeating pattern by reflecting the letter inside a grid. The pink and green were chosen for a cheerful office wallpaper. Other drafts of the project included other sizes, fonts, and colors, but this was my ultimate choice for what I had in mind for this project.

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Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.