Video Creation

During the course of one semester I was taking a Photoshop class and a class in Adobe Flash.
One week, both instructors assigned a video. I had spent the Saturday before watching our Boy Scout Troop work on an Eagle Project. So...I did what any time-economizing student would do. I used the same footage for both classes. Each assignment was very different.

The first was for my Photoshop class. I was to use only Photoshop to create the movie. We had to add a soundtrack. Here is the link:

Photoshop video

The other assignment was for my Adobe Flash class. He was not as concerned how we made the movie, just that we were able to publish it on our school's server and display it on a website. I taught myself Microsoft Movie Maker in one afternoon. Here is the link:

Flash Class video

Thanks go out to BSA Troop 515 and James Riddle for allowing me to video his Eagle project.

Adobe Flash Banner Ad

A banner ad for the NC State Fair! It doesn't look exactly the same as when it was run through Adobe Flash and put on our website, but here is a .gif version. You can get the idea.

Wake Tech CCN Poster

Another "real client" is the job search service that our college uses to help students and alumni find gainful employment.
We were given the benefits of the service and the links to the respective ways of contacting them. The rest was up to us.

ECGC Logo

Our Instructor had us doing work for actual clients in our Illustrator class.
This was my submission to a logo contest for the East Coast Gaming Conference.

NC Foods - composite and typography

A project about NC Foods. Our goal was to use composite layouts to bring attention to what our state has to offer. I added some creative typography. I love the way it turned out.

Magazine Covers

Evidently our Instructor really liked to assign magazine covers.
The first one was to be the theme of our choice. I had recently been walking around the historic area of our town, and took some photos.
I love our little town.

 

The next one was for our Final Project. It was a composite photo. Again, the subject was our choice. I have a passion for old cameras and so I used what I love!

Personal Photoshop work

Once I got a handle on the Photoshop repair and optimizing tools and strategies, I knew there were some photos that I needed to fix. For me.

The first one is of my Daddy and me. I was three years old.

There was a lot to be done on this one. It was rather tedious removing all of the white splashes. No one knows what it was exactly.

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This next one, I am pretty sure that I was the one that tore it. It has forever made me so sad to see it, since it was one of my favorite pictures. I was about two years old and this was my favorite mode of transportation.

This makes me feel so much happier when I look at it.

Thanks, Photoshop!

Optimizing in Photoshop

One of my new favorite things is PhotoShop. I love learning about it and what it can do and how to enhance photos.
Here are some examples of some of my work.

 

Before

After

We had to clean up and optimize a photo that we had taken. This was from a camping trip to the New River in southwest Virginia.

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Actual Photo

"Painted" photo.

The assignment read:

"Choose 1 of your images, and create a painting using the concepts you learned in Lesson 11. Make the image look completely painted, and not as though it started from a photograph." I got an A!

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 Before

 

After

Another optimizing assignment:

This one was to have people in it. I chose a picture of the great grandkids [plus a great-great-grandkid].

This was fun and opened up the door for me to do some optimizing and repair on my own photos, for my own personal use. I'll save those for the next post.

Graphic Design Autobiography

I took a design class in the spring of 2013. I really liked it. It was hands-on, paste up and not on the computer. No technology, just paper, ruler, an x-acto blade and a glue stick.
One of my projects was a self evaluation - cut/paste style. My focus was, as usual, my family. I asked several of my family members and close friends to submit words that they thought represented me. I type-set those in Adobe InDesign. The photographs were from my many years of collecting. I ran most of them through Photoshop to optimize them for printing.
Here are the words, typeset, before being put on the board:

I really enjoyed this part. Although, usually, one of things that I spend most of my time on is font choice.

This was kind of brutal. Some were easier than others, but a few took quite a bit of time.

The finished product contained about 60 photos, 8 random images and the words you see above - 31 of them!
It's kind of big, so it takes 4 photos to see the details.

 Top Left quadrant

 Bottom Left quadrant

 Top Right quadrant

Bottom right quadrant 

Whole project

I really enjoyed this one! I got an A on this project.

Mid Term Project - Typography

The assignment was to creatively present all of the concepts we had learned in Adobe InDesign up the the mid-term point.

New Bern Pamphlet - Typography

This was my final project for my Typography class - Adobe InDesign. Fall 2012. The task was to compose a four page pamphlet that could either be printed or online. Our subject was to be our favorite town and the benefits of visiting there. I chose New Bern NC.

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I had to do a presentation that showed all of the elements that were required. I chose to highlight the requirements by screen capturing them and inserting the images directly onto my document. I explained the technique used to create them, as well as the placement and usage of each item.