Creating texures in photoshop

Textures that i made in photoshop using simple filters and a cloud.

Putting a simple animation on a logo

i was tyring to put a animation into my logo i simply set up a animation from my logo to switch between to states. this was by using frame by frame animation in photoshop this lesson was more a demo of doin frame by frame animation in photoshop however if i wanted to make this animation better i could very easily put the elements into Flash and work at animation in that program because its made more towards animating things anyway.

my pheonix would go from this state and then as the mouse hovers over it i would like it to change into.

Neville Brody

Brody is a very famous typographer, design and brand strategist his work can be very simple in design. He is very flexible in his use of colour as in some of his work he uses just black and white and in other it is full of colour showing he is confident in using many mediums and ways of working to create stunning design work. His work draws your eye in to make you wonder why he did things in each design the way he did this is one thing that I envy as a designer my self.  I like all the style’s that brody has show on his website such as the designs using only pictures and even his typography ones usually typography doesn’t impress me that much because I feel that as long as you know the language your writing in you can create good typography. Typography is just knowing how to use text in ways to portray more than just the word its self and I feel that brody’s work does this aspect of typography a great justice and his work will inspire many people of the future to work with typography if not as there main source but as a experimental exercise.

 just two examples of brody's work

Layout ideas

after i researched websites thats inspire me and that i wanted to take elements from to create of work my own but to a similar style. i have a few ideas but the one i would really like to try out would be to have my logo almost as a emblem in the center of my website home page with all the hyperlinks to diferent pages in a tribal patterned circle around the logo to create a more orignal layout to the type of website that i am making mine. i feel this would be a good idea because its different and not generic to the way websites are being designed lately. i feel that my website will have to use mostly Black Reds and greys due to the style of inventory to the site. although this is a limited choie of colours i know i can make many different variations of borders.

Tshirt designing

Tshirt design using typography and and Photography.

Website Layout research and begining to plan

I have been working towards planning a layout on my website however instead of trying to just create one I decided I would research and look at websites based around my style of site to get an informed view on the market and current fashion in the websites around my style.

I have that the websites that sell items of my style and are in my style are;

http://www.spiraldirect.com/  because of its influence from tribal designs and the range of makes it sells that are reflected perfectly into the design of the website. Although it has a very basic layout it deliverers in style and originality due to design. I would strive to create a website as well made as this website.

http://www.grindstore.com/ This site is different because of how easily you can navigate and it makes me think of how I need simplicity in navigation but complexity in design to keep the eye’s engaged but also knowing where they are while on the website.

http://www.bluebanana.com/ This site is a very well known site and packs the site full of information and things to buy so its stock of items is very impressive however that on the home page it is very over packed and so I would be happy to have the stock that blue banana have acquired.

After looking at these sites I have a few ideas flying around in my head. I feel that my site has to be original and so I might take aspects that each site use such as drawing on tribal patterns to enhance my designs such as borders. I will try and take the simplicity of travel on the grind store website and merge it with blue bananas mass of stock to create a user friendly website full of everything needed.

Website basics

Fps is the rate at which frames are shown in your animation. 12fps would mean that for 3 secs of play we would need 36 frames.

Higher the frame rate the faster your animation lower slower

we set up a very basic website design of four pages with button leading to and from each page this helped to give us a sense on how to actually create a working website and how to maybe link and structure our website the way we want too.

this was a usefull lesson because it means that i have refreshed how to make working buttons in flash and now can get on to designing my actually website.

Flash Movie experiments

We have been experimenting with Flash and making videos or sort animations. we learnt how to go into frame on and postion a seaguls wings so that we could turn it into a video of the seagul flying.
we then had it tweening across the screen in a SWF video

we then flipped it and brought it back across the screen

Logo Final

This is the finish logo out of the ones i designed today i feel very happy with this design because it really pulls the eye towards the pheonix and i like how i found a way to use my experiment in my final piece.

Logo Re design

today i redesigned a logo for my website. after looking with Dan at my design he suggested taking my pheonix design and using that because it was a very well made image and it would be a shame to not actually use it. therefore i gathered my pheonix and started to think about design after getting a few together i decided to change the name of my website from barbaric clothing to Pheonix clothing or Black pheonix clothing. i have decided on one logo from the six i created. these are the Four i choose not to use.

Logo Design

Today i spent the day designing the Logo for my website. i started with a pentagram that used for my art course last year and made it digital then changed it using photoshop and a Graphics tablet. this gave me greater control over my logo design as a whole because it meant i was drawing not using the mouse.
this is the pentagram i decided to use.

I then decided that the logo was to bland and so decided i would Swords crossed behind the whole design to give it more substance however i feel it still needs a little more and so i think i will change a few things and keep using different ways and combinations of the swords to make a logo that i really want to have on my work i am also thinking of putting a banner in to have my website name inside so that the brand has a title not just a logo like putting a name to a face.

DSLR introduction

Today we had a introduction to the DSLR camera and we got taught the basics on how to use the camera on manaul mode.

we covered

Aperture

The main function of a camera lens is to collect light. The aperture of a lens is the diameter of the lens opening and is usually controlled by an iris. The larger the diameter of the aperture, the more light reaches the film / image sensor. Aperture is expressed as F-stop, e.g. F2.8 or f/2.8. The smaller the F-stop number  the larger the lens opening

We also covered 

Exposure

Exposure is the amount of light collected by the sensor in your camera during a single picture.  If the shot is exposed too long the photograph will be washed out.  If the shot is exposed too short the photograph will appear too dark.  

Illustrator Experiment

Today we opened illustrator to get to grips with the interface and learnt what could be done on the program. this program has really stuck with me and i seem to pick it up very quickly and enjoy using it other than photoshop. i can also design everything in illustrator then move it to photoshop using export to then colour and tweak it slightly adding final touches.
I experimented on illustrator using the touch screen drawwing straight onto the canvas using the brush set up of chalk scribble i didnt have an idea what i wanted my end result to be but after messing it became clear that i could turn the shapes and fluid lines into something very interesting.
This was my image.

I then got told to add shapes and basic text to the image to show my understanding of shapes and tools in illustrator and i came up with this even though i prefer just the phoenix. i understand that i had to add to it to cover the shapes and show that i took everything in while the demo was being taught.

experiments with panorama

Design Idea for website

My idea for the website in this unit is to either create a new website selling Goth and alterative or re-design Tribal voices website. However I feel more comfortable designing my own website and mixing many different labels and styles of clothes that I know and like to wear. My website will have a large inventory of everything from shoes to accessories such as wrist bands and jewellery. I have already thought of a name for my website and am looking forward to designing a logo to really emphasize the name of my site. Logo design will be a very interesting process because I did allot of logo designing last year and so I think I will be able to use all my skills from last year into helping my website look very professional. Gathering the things I put on my website shouldn’t be too much of a challenge I know plenty of website that have the brands I would like the only problem I and worried about is the copyright issues and whether there will be problems in that area or not.

My website should reflect the style of things on it therefore I feel I will be working with mostly greys, black and reds. This will let me experiment on putting red inlays into designs for borders and icons. But also this has a down side due to having such a limited palate I need to really work hard on making my designs stand out from the rest of the market. Although this poses a challenge I feel that having an idea that inspires me will give me the drive to get to the standard that I require.

Researching this project should be rather simple for me as I have been shopping from the site that inspired my idea for years I will be trying to find there designers to get further inspiration and maybe even find where they got their inspiration and see it can spark any new creative ideas for my website. I think I will look further than the websites I already know and try to find new websites because I feel the more websites I find and look at will give me a higher chance of making mine all the more original because I will know my market and know what been done and what hasn’t. I think getting the designs to be completely original will be the hardest bit but with such a vast selections of styles I could draw inspiration from means I can truly let my ideas flow. I will especially try to use the least amount of tribal style possible because I feel it is used on most of the websites that sell this style of clothing and accessories. Therefore I will have to look into lots of design styles to create my style.

Snooker Ball in Photoshop

Today we made a Snooker ball in Photoshop we did this by first making a gradient on a layer above the background. This gradient went from foreground to background. This created a black fading to white background on which we could create our snooker ball. We then used a selection tool called elliptical marquee tool. This tool creates circles but only if you hold Shift. We then positioned the circle in the centre of the page we then used the selection we already had to create a copy of the circle slightly below the circle we had and then filled that one in black. To create a shadow from the black circle we used Gaussian Blur on a scale of 25 to give it a very Soft edge that looked like a shadow then positioned it in the right place. Then to make the shadow look natural we used dodge tool to create a highlight on the original circle and then used the burn tool on the bottom to make the bottom of the circle blend with the shadow we did. We then made a selection with the elliptical marquee again and created three ovals that where all connected and then saved the selection. Using the circle selection and loading the new selection into the current it meant we could create a layer mask and then with reduced opacity to fade the colour in circle again but leaving a faint white outline to make it look like a glare coming off the ball this we the final touches to our snooker ball.

Effects in Text

Shattering Text

We wrote simple text today to then add effects to it. We first used a FX that was bevel and emboss to make it look metal type face. We then merged the layers of effects down because if we didn’t the effects would mess up from splitting the text. Then using the polygonal lasso tool we selected triangles from the text to slightly move to give it a broken glass effect. I am sure this can be used in lots of ways and it has sparked ideas to use it in my other module for the ending of my comic book.

We then used the lasso tool on a new layer to create a circle around the middle or the whole text and then feathered the lasso using Shift F6 to create a blur around the outside of the selection. We then deselected the lasso and the use the effect Blur and Radial Blur. To create almost a black hole kind of space zoom feel we used the Cloud effect by going through the Render menu. After giving a space feel behind the text we needed to give the Text the same zoom to make it fit. Therefore we right click the thumbnail and select the pixels in the text layer and then we make a new layer to add a 50% grey fill therefore creating a grey version of our text below it. We then go back into Blur and Radial blur like before to give the explosion text inside it. We then merged the two explosions to make it easier to match the Hue and Saturation that we were about to change. Making sure we only selected the explosion layer we changed the explosion to a colour that we wanted. Then to give the Text and Shadow we used the Effect Stroke and Drop shadow to position a shadow in the place we wanted it.

Experiments with 3D max and Primitive shapes

Today While waiting for the lesson to begin i opened 3Dmax to have a look at the interface and try to use it with help. this was a very good idea because it means that i will practice 3Dmax for later use in the year.

i decided to use only primitive shapes in Max because i havent looked at molding shapes into my own shapes yet. I only used a Torus, Sphere, Box, Cylinder.

After gathering these shapes i started putting them into posistions not having a shape that i actaully wanted to create as an end image however i kept moving and experimenting and eventually came up with a final Robot like face cartoon that i happen to like. i feel i would like to experiment with 3Dmax more however i would also like to be shown the basics of molding and creating my own shapes not just moving primitive ones into a shape or a piece.

Texture imputting on Text with back drop

I decided after making the word that i put texture onto that i would create a relevant backdrop using the skills i had learnt to make the wall earlier. therefore creating a nice image. altho after making it i noticed that it didnt look right without the lighting being in the right place therefore i used a spot light tool that i had experimented with while getting to grips with the tools of 3D max. After positioning the spotlight i found another thing about my image that could be improves and it was that the word didnt look seperate from the background due to it having no shadow casting onto the back ground there i went into light settings and activated light shadowing.

This is the image i have ended with.

Texture imputting on Text

I have now Been practicing on 3D max and have use everything i have learnt today and made text 3D and put the textures that i wanted onto the letters. Then using the skills i learnt this morning and rotated and moved the word into a position that i liked and wanted.

Overall Today i feel that 3D max is a programm that i can really get to grip's with and prefer to photoshop and so i think when we get our own projects to do i would probaly find more uses for 3D max because i feel i can produce a better outcome.

Texture Imputing

After the lunch break we logged back into 3D max to put Textures onto a wall. This was done by going into material editer and importing a picture of texture that we had selected from the internet for the demo.

3D max intro to editting Polygons

Editting polygons was a very simple to to grasp once we had the demo. you create a shape and then right click the shape and convert to a edittable poly that way you can click seperate parts of the shape and mold them and change them completely seperately to the whole shape this way giving you the abilitiy to change the shape into something completely different from the begining shape.

This is proven within my Shape because i started with a simple Tube shape and have just changed shapes to create a shape that reminds me of a water tower shape.

3D Max introduction of simple text

Today we Covered the very basic's of 3D max in the form of making a text and rotating, Scaleing, Moving and then making it the Text 3D and exporting it into Photoshop and placing it in an image of our choice

This image is of me making basic shapes and playing with the moving and rotation tools

We then Made a piece of text on max and use any words we wanted and then we exported to photoshop and i also decided to put a rendering onto my Text in the form of Chorme effect to my text to make it less standard and more orignal to my style not just the demo we did.

Sound Recorder introduction

Today we had a introduction  into using the sound recording equipment and learning how to use a Gun Mic with a Marantz. which meant that we learnt how to set it up into a preset for indoor and outdoor recording. we also learnt how to formatt the memory cards before and after use to make sure that no other students can use my work. we learnt how to set up the recorder to record MP3 formatt because its the smallest and simplest setting to record.
we also learnt the names for different types of mic.
Directional Mic = a mic that only picks up sound in the direction you are pointing the recieving end
Omnidirectional Mic= a mic that picks up all sound around it in an arc therefore picking up background noise that you could other wise not want.

Personal ID Poster Lesson

We Were given a Brief to make a poster with Photoshop with my name date of birth. we could only use Blakc and White images but we could use scanners or any technolgy to get things into our poster.
i made a poster using a picture of my arm and a picture of my T-Shirt. I made my name out of a dot a paint for each letter and using the smudge tool into the shape i wanted. i then Create paths using the pen to place all my Text into a shape i want. i Really enjoyed this lesson it was fun to try messing with filters.

Graffiti Forms

Today i researched Graffiti in a Group and i was given the task of research Forms of Graffiti

Tag Style

Tag style is the most basic and quickest form of graffiti writing. It is usually a representation of the artists name and is used as a way to gain recognition by being seen in a lot of places and as a signature for larger pieces.

Throw-Up

This style is another quick method of graffiti writing. It is done by making a layer of paint in one colour and a quick outline of the letters in another.

Blockbuster

Blockbuster letters are evenly spaced and not too difficult to read. They are just what the name implies, block letters. This style is often done on large areas such as whole train cars

Wild Style

This style is much more complex than any of the previously mentioned. The letters are very blended and highly decorated. This type of writing can be very difficult to decipher.

Stencils

Graffiti stencils are used to paint usually monochromatic text or images quickly and repeatedly on multiple types of surfaces. Because these stencils are usually used repeatedly, they should be made out of somewhat sturdy material to make them reusable and easy to clean. They should be able to stand up under multiple layers of paint

Street Art Video

We watched a Street art documentary which included amazing artist such as Invader and Banksy this was a very helpful video it opens your eyes to the world of Street art which other wise can be a very elusive style of art. The video is a very eye catching thing in almost every shot theres things to listen to or see it really drags you into the film and inspires you just by seeing how you could work with enough desire to work you can pretty much create anything you can imagine using your inviroment. The way the Artist created the work shows a tradition background using stencils to help your work evolve into larger pieces. I Like the way each artist in the video has his own signature mark to place onto the world and put into the view of the public. the scale of danger they can through just to pull off there art work is a sign of pure passion and dedication.

Poster

Last Week we Took a trip down to a local park and took some picture's of various things i picked out the picture of billy actually falling off a bar but he landed safety and looked very interesting in ways he is postioned. I then used a filter to change the image into a very cool looking poster background and so i used the glowing edges filter because i thought it gave the image the best look. i then simply added a Pen Tool path and connected the text to it.

Putting Text of Images

After doin the demos with the class i used what i had learned to put text into and image of my face. but first i had to take the image and put it into greyscale first. Then i put a filter on it to make it cutout filter. i then made a path using magic wand and put text in the path.

Texting Following Pen Paths

We Also used the pen tool too create wavey lines to creat a path for the text to follow. this was soo much easier to get your desired shape because you can customise the path.You dont Distort the text.