DMF Assignment, Week #4 Erasure

Hello to all!
This week in Digital Media Foundations we have been practicing erasing. That's right! The art of removing things from an image. It has been a very fun activity experimenting with the symbology and implications of the things removed from images. Unfortunately I had a harder time saving things this week. I have all my images, but they were not saved the way I want them to be. On the bright side, they still look interesting and almost odd.... But I hope you like them. It takes a lot more work than you might think. Enjoy!

DMF Assignment #3, Scratch Project

This week in DMF we have been working with Vector graphics and flat color. In these pieces I was working with a specific set of perameters; flat color, limited paletter, clear shapes. What I played with mostly on this assignment was underlying messages. I found that even with very geometric shapes and sharp colors, I can still create analytical pieces that are creative and constructive.
I hope you like them. :)

1. How are they different from working with continuous tones?
I found that these pieces were different becuase the flat color made everything much sharper. For example, the gradients are simpler and there is a lot less variation in color. Each piece has a distinct shade (and one background is gradient). Initially I thought that a limited palette would be, well, limiting! But I found that working within a distinctive palette made the graphics more striking. I discovered elements that might have otherwise been subtle, had I not stayed within those boundaries.
2. How did you choose which colors to work with?
I never had specific colors in mind. What I tried to do with each piece is to push myself by choosing a random color to start with and then maintaining that color as the hub of my palette. An example of this is my last piece, which says "Freedom has many shapes". The background is not a particularly attractive color. ( I referred to it earlier as vomit mustard.....). But when I started to envision my graphics, I chose the paler gold and black because I thought they looked complimentary. Now that I see my finished piece, I wouldn't change the colors. They have grown on me.
3. Did some color combinations work better than others?
Yes, several color combinations worked better than others. I found that after I chose an initial palette, that I had to be very selective about which colors I chose and where I applied them. One thing I found that helps with color combinations is brightness/contrast. I used this tool to manipulate the hues of these pieces, so that they would have a more unique and eye-catching effect.

Digital Media Foundations, Type Assignment

Hello friends,
this year I am taking courses for my Emerging Arts and Digital Media minor. For the next eight months I will be posting assignments on my blog. Most of them will be samples of the coursework covered that week, including brief reflective writings.
This first assignment was to experiment with type, or with a single letter and case. As you can see, I got a little creative. :)
Here are my five samples:

   2. What attracted you to one of the letters you chose? What things did you notice about the letter as a shape?
When choosing letters, what attracted me was the variation of fonts, not the individual letters. I picked the ones that I thought would give me the most flexibility, like bricks to build a church with. As you can see, several of my samples has subjects that have very definite characteristics. For example, the owl made out of O's. I couldn't have made the owl as easily if I had used an H. :)
3. Did you find working with layers easy and intuitive, or awkward at first? Where there any tricks that made working with layers easier?
At first I was pretty confused. I hadn't used photo shop in five or so years! After lots of mistakes and UGLY results, I discovered two tricks. The first trick is to make a layer for every single part of your canvas. For example, I made a layer for every row and every larger piece of the font so that they could be adjusted individually. The other trick I used, which helped me in adjusting and giving personality to my type, is the COMMAND T, or the FREE TRANSFORM action. This allowed me to manipulate my characters in a new and really exciting way! Check out my giant, tipsy T! The one that appears to be falling over. Also, when I did that piece, I was experimenting with kinetic motion, or implied motion.
 4. Were letters always the figures in your compositions, or were there some compositions where they seemed to form the ground for other parts of the composition?
Yes! I referred to this in my first response question as well. But in three of my five samples I created other shapes, using the letters as foundations. In one of them I used a lower case 'i' to create a lego-style samurai warrior! In another I used cursive O's to create an owl. And in the other I used lower case cursive f's to create my version of a kaleidoscope vortex, which reminded me of a dust devil.