Showcase
An example of how you made a choice related to genre or audience.
In this project, I chose to use my cover art for "All I Need" in order to captivate an audience. The audience I was creating this for was one that was involved with music or would be interested in my musical growth.
I mention before about how I achieved this, by importing a picture into illustrator/inDesign and manipulating the image to look cartoonish. I was happy with this design, but not so much with font choice
In the future, I think my choice of font will definitely add a better feel to this whole project. I added a grainy effect to the 'walls' to add more depth. This was something that I was interested in doing because it showcased a world that was somewhat distorted and imperfect
PhotoShop: Typography/layering project
An example of how you made a choice related to color, fonts, captions, scale, or other aspects of the visual mode.
In this project, I wanted to again include a musical aspect. Specifically, I wanted to include the piano similar to the logo design, but in a more 3D, captivating manner. After my friend took a few photos of me sitting down on a table, I imported that image into PS and added effects to it.
These effects included grain filter, sharpening, contrast changes, hue/saturation effects, and lightness within the image. Cutting out my body with the pen tool was also nice, because I could zoom in and make the cuts precisely
Once I had my body cut out appropriately, I found an image online of a piano with a key pushed down. The ultimate goal was to have my body sitting on a piano key with some text around me. I figured that if I found an image with the key pressed down, it would create a more realistic effect as to me sitting down on it.
After looking at several fonts, I decided to stick with something simple and easily readable. I chose a maroon like color to match the pants I was wearing, so it seemed more aesthetically pleasing. I chose to type "MAJOR KEY ALERT," while using a different font for the word "KEY." I skewed this layer to add more variety within the image.
Overall, I feel as if this project turned out the way I had envisioned it. One aspect I could incorporate next time is maybe using a different font and making it stand out more.
Movie Poster Idea
An example of how you made a choice related to comparing one thing to another.
My partner and I chose to edit the original "Finding Nemo" movie poster. By doing this, we found an image of where Dory and Marlon encounter the angler fish. Their expressions were terrifying, so we decided to use this image and add effects to make it into a horror themed film poster.
When we downloaded the image and imported into Photoshop, we immediately added more contrast to the picture to add a darker feel to it, making it seem scarier. After this, I added the usual grain filter (my personal favorite). We even skewed the image to make the layout vertical, as the original image was horizontal. The image was genuinely starting to look like an actual movie poster once we did this.
After searching through some fonts, we added the original 'Finding Nemo' text on the image. Then, we decided to take the project to another level by adding the text, "Based on a True Story." This in turn gave a scarier effect to the poster. As an audience, whenever we see something linked to a true story and it deals with horror, it immediately raises more attention and fear. We figured we would do this in order to evoke those emotions of being afraid.
Finally, to add a little more emphasis on the horror theme, we decided to use the paintbrush tool and the color red in order to emulate blood splatter. This was the final touches to our masterpiece.
Logo Design
An example of something that frustrated you or took a larger amount of time than you would have liked
With my logo design, I had never saved original copies because I was extremely frustrated. This may be hard to envision without physical copies of the procress, but I will do my best in explaining why this was frustrating.
As I had mentioned before, in this logo design, I wanted to incorporate my musical aspect in my life (playing piano) with my artist name MANU. Initially I had started with my full name and tried to incorporate piano keys below those. Compared to the final product, the logo would have read exactly the same, but with my full name.
When I attempted to do this, the piano keys were not working out. My name was looking fine, but the keys were distorted and not working out. I even tried reversing my name to UNAM to see if anything aesthetically would change. Through a painstaking process and disappointment, I soon realized that I could not incorporate my full name in the logo.
Finally, I decided that my style was minimalistic. I thought to myself: why don't I try making this simpler? After thinking this, I resorted to using just the first letter of my name and working something out. Ultimately, if you zoom in to the keys, they are slightly distorted (I feel like only I can tell), but I feel like it worked.
Soundscape
An example of something you are particularly proud of.
As this class did not go as expected, I was particularly proud of the soundscape I created. My life as a musician and love for music is demonstrated in this project. I feel as if I was only the only one who took the muscial route in the process. I could not imagine creating something without some musical aspect. Once we had decided to do the 'calm before the storm,' I immeditately knew what to resort to.
I decided to incorporate the Lofi effects because they evoked the 'calm' aspect. The effects I used made it more calm and pleasing. Once I had created the loop without the drums, it felt right. Everything felt right. Although I was not including traditional soundscape values, this definitely flowed.
The link below goes to the finished soundscape on my SoundCloud page, which now also has the cover art design as my main profile picture.
'Soundscape'