Develop Your Pen Tool Skills

Pen Tool Practice Exercise 1:

Pen Tool Tutorial:

Read through this tutorial carefully and follow along with illustrator using the pen tool. You will be required to turn in a pdf file that demonstrates your steps of pen tool practice in each step of the tutorial, additionally at the end of the tutorial there are 10 black shapes. You must trace these shapes using the pen tool. You may download the images, and use the FILE/PLACE function in Illustrator to place the jpg on your artboard for tracing.

View the tutorial here: http://www.vectordiary.com/illustrator/drawing-with-pen-tool

When your Pen Tool Exercise is complete you can move on to this next assignment, Place and Trace. The goal is to further practice your Pen Tool by tracing line art over a photograph.

Pen Tool Practice Exercise 2: Place and Trace:

The goal of your place and trace assignment is to show clean lines, and to use line profile modifications and different line weights to add focus and emphasis to the details and features in your illustration.

1. Search for a photograph online that you would like to trace... make sure the image is at least 1000 pixels wide so that it contains some good details. Look for images that have details that can be traced, flat looking images may not trace well
2. Download your image and import it into Adobe Illustrator
3. Lock down the layer that contains your photograph, create a new layer to create artwork on above the image
4. Using your Pen Tool only, trace line art over your photograph, make sure there is no Fill, Outline only! Vary the thickness and other stroke properties to add depth to your illustration
5. Turn off the photograph layer to see your line art. Keep drawing until your image contains a good level of detail. Save your file often to avoid losing work to software crashes, etc

Place and Trace Examples:

Randomized Album Design Project

Hello Students,

Your new assignment is to create an album cover design. Photography is provided, but you can add original design, illustration or alteration. Use all of your skills you have learned this semester. This is a preliminary exercise to compare your skill advancement near the end of our coursework.

Introducing: Fou Ts'ong, Piano, Mozart Piano Cocerti , K503 & K595,  Westminster , Designer, Rudolph de Harak

Assignment Details:

You will be creating a CD album artwork. Think about how you can visualize the physical and emotional response the music creates inside of you... how can you put those influences into a visual representation? They key to this assignment is to make sure the artwork on the album cover is representational of the music it is showcasing. Although in this case the music doesn't exist, and neither do the musicians. You must design an album cover based on your own interpretations of the album and artist name that you will be given through a randomized method.

Design by Nic Milcevski, Graphic Design Student, 2016

Assignment Specifications:

Utilize all of the skills you have learned this semester. This project should be a shining example of your graphic design skills for your portfolio. We will design another album from scratch at a later date to compare our skill development. When you design your cover

Follow the steps below to discover your artist and album title:

• First, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The title of the article is now the name of your band. 
• Next, go here: http://cubemonkey.net/quotes/ Choose a category and generate a quote... the last three to five words of the last quote are the title of your first album.
• Lastly, go here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Select the 3rd image. It is now the photo for your album cover. Manipulate the picture, resize it, add some other color, whatever. Manipulate the image digitally as you see fit to match the type of music your "group" makes. Do the same with the band name and album title typography
• Finesse your design until you think it's perfect within the deadline allowed.
• Complete your design with Photoshop or Illustrator, your choice. If you use Photoshop, make sure the resolution is at least 800 pixels wide/tall
• Export a JPG and post to your blog when complete

This album topped the charts in 1978, a powerful solo album of acoustic love ballads by the russian folk artist, Aryeh Shander. Just kidding! It never existed, and was created by me with a random selection of artist name and album title. 

Links for Design Inspiration... Check These Out!

35 Beautiful Music Album Covers

50 Amazing Album Cover Art Examples

Designs are due on Friday, have fun!

- Mr.W

Previous Student Examples:

It's Bloggerin' Time!

Students, your new assignment is to create an online repository for your design work as a portfolio or showcase. You will turn in assignments by posting your work along with any written material. You can choose to use blogger or wordpress, weebly, bechance or any other online platform that lets you post images, text and looks professional. The choice is yours, blogger is simpler and more straightforward but wordpress will give a more flexible and professional option... but it can be a bit more challenging. The choice is yours, choose wisely.... and make sure your platform isn't blocked by the school network. if you choose to use blogger you can follow the guide below:

Blog Setup Assignment:

1. Create an account and set up a blog either at blogger.com or wordpress.com
2. Go back through your work and post your recent assignments, photo manipulation, tutorial results, collage and your typeblock poster
3. Email your site link to your instructor for inclusion in the blog link list
4. Chillax and get ready for the next project!

Now, you may be asking yourself:
"Do I have to use Blogger?"Which is a strange question to ask yourself, but the short answer is no. Many platforms such as Wordpress, Weebly, Wix or even Flickr or Imgr can be used. The quality, flexibility and ease of use are the determining factors. Wordpress is the professional standard, everything else will work and look "ok" but not "amazing". Think of the life of your blog, will you continue to use it in the future and show it to potential employers? That use Wordpress, if not then it is your choice for platforms. As long as you can post images, text and share the URL with the class it will work.

How to set up a Blogger Blog:

Despite all of the hype with "blogs" in recent years, a blog really isn't anything much more complicated than a means for publishing work on the web in an easy to read and easy to update format. Some blogs are very personal, resemembling a diary, while others seem more akin to newspaper or magazine journalism. For our class this term, you will keep a blog where I'll ask you to post several short writing responses this term. Most of these exercises will be just a few pages long and they should help you working on the longer writing projects this semester.One easy way to do this is with Blogger, a free and easy to use service. Here are the instructions for how to set up a blog with Blogger.

Step 1: Go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for a blog

Again, it's an easy to use service, but let me give you a few pieces of advice on how to accomplish this:

• At the start page for blogger, click on the orange arrow that says "create your blog now."
• Blogger now is part of Google, so if you have a Google account (which allows for things like gmail) you should use that to set up your new blogger account. If you don't have a Google account, now is a pretty good chance to set one up. Otherwise, it is just a matter of following the instructions on this page.
• Be sure to check the "terms of service" box; of course, you might actually want to read through it a bit first, though the rules are pretty standard for these sorts of services.
• Save your username and password some place. In fact, I would encourage you to write it down some place. Don't lose this!
• When you're done, click on the orange "continue" button, which will take you to another page. If you did something wrong or you supplied a username or password that doesn't work, Blogger will stop you from proceeding until you fix the error.
• The "Blog Title" will be what appears in the title portion of your blog. I recommend you keep it something simple like "My English 328 Blog" or whatever you want.
• For the address of your blog, I'd encourage you to use your username. So, in my case, the blogger blog address would be http://krause328.blogspot.com Unless you know what you're doing with ftp functions, you should use blogspot.com to host your blog.
• The "word verification" section is a security set-up the blogger folks have; simply type in the word you see in the funky font into the provided box. Click "continue" when you're done.
• You can choose any template you want for your blog, and you can also change the template later if you would like. Click continue when you're done.
• After waiting a few moments, you should get a screen that says your blog has been created. Good for you! Click on the "start posting" arrow and get to work!

To change your comment settings:

• Log into your blog
• Click on the "design" tab
• Go to "settings" and then "posts and comments" and change your settings to the example above
• Save your settings before finishing

Please change your blog settings to block comments and set all comments to be moderated always.

Your comment settings should look like the one shown here...

Step 2: Get posting!

• The posting screen for blogger is pretty straight-forward. Give your entries a title, type in the appropriate window, and use the editing tools for your blog entry as you want. We'll talk about more advanced options for your posting later, but if you know any basic html, you can incorporate most of that code into your blog posts.
• To post or "publish" your post, click the button at the bottom of the screen "Publish Post." If you start writing something but you don't want to post it until later, click where it says "Save as Draft."
• When you publish your post, blogger will process the information and then, if everything worked (and it usually does), it will give you the option to "view blog." Take a look at it; you should notice a couple of things:
  • The address for your blog-- something like http://stevendkrause.blogspot.com-- is the address for your blog. Send this URI (web address) to me! I will link to your blog from the class web site.
  • Readers should be able to post a comment to your post by clicking on the "comments" link.

Step 3: Do some adjustments to your account

There are a number of different things you might want to do to make your blog a bit more useful. But here are a couple of things you really should do no matter what.

Blocking blog spam. I know, hard to believe, but yes, the world of spamming extends to blogs too. Fortunately, Blogger has a pretty decent security feature that will eliminate almost all spam posts from your blog. Here's what to do:

• If you aren't already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
• From the "Dashboard" screen, click on the name of your blog.
• Click on the tab "Settings."
• Click on the link near the top of that page under the tabs labeled "Comments."
• Set "Who Can Comment?" to "Only Registered Users." It isn't essential that you do this, but I'd recommend it.
• A bit further down, set "Show word verification for comments?" to "Yes." This is a security feature that requires the comment poster to type a specific word that shows up as slightly distorted text in a window.
• Select "Save Settings" at the bottom of the page.

Time zone. It'd be nice if the time was right on your blog, right? Here's how to do that:

• If you aren't already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
• From the "Dashboard" screen, click on the name of your blog.
• Click on the tab "Settings."
• Click on the link near the top of that page under the tabs labeled "Formatting."
• Under "Time Zone," select the right time zone (and if you're reading this as part of one of my classes, that'd be "Detroit." Duh.)
• Select "Save Settings" at the bottom of the page.

Doing things to customize your blogger blog. There's lots of stuff you can do customize your blog. At a minimum, I'd recommend including some links to your classmates' blogs or other blogs you like to read, but there are a lot of other things you can do, too-- include pictures, lists of stuff you like, etc., etc.

• If you aren't already logged in, log in to your Blogger account. You did remember your username and password, right?
• From the "Dashboard" screen, click on the name of your blog.
• Click on the tab "Template."
• Make sure the "Page Elements" tab under this is selected, and click on "Add a Page Element." From here, simply follow the instructions. Be sure to save you page element additions and double-check that it worked.

Step 4: Repeat

This is all you need to do to set up your blogger interface (though, as you can see further down on this page, there are some other things you will probably want to try to do sooner than later). Easy, right?

To post to your blogger blog from now on, here's all you need to do:

• Once again, go to http://www.blogger.com
• Log in with your username and your password (you remembered your username and password, right?) DO NOT click on the "create your blog now" because that will just get you back to step 1.
• After you log in, you should get to your blogger "dashboard," which has a link to your blog. Click the link to manage the blog or click on "New Post" to make a new post to the blog.

Trouble-shooting

"Hey, what should I do if it didn't work?!" Well, blogger really is pretty easy to use, and while it does sometimes have bugs that are of course not your fault, usually if your blog doesn't work, it is is because of something that you did (or didn't) do.

So the first thing you should do is re-trace the steps above: are you sure you did everything I outline here? Really? Are you positive?

If you're confident that you did everything right, here are a couple of other thoughts:

"I tried to enter in my blog address into a web broswer but it didn't work"

Then try this:

• Log in to blogger, using your username and password that you used to sign up for blogger in the first place.
• Get to your blogger "dashboard."
• Click on the link to your blog.
• Click on the tab at the top that says "view blog"
• The web address (or URI) that appears in the window is the address to your blog. It will be something like http://something.blogspot.com Copy this information and paste it into an email message to me.

"I wrote my posts but nothing has shown up yet"

If this is the case, then you probably didn't "Publish" your entry yet but you did a "save as draft." Go back to it and push the "publish" button. This should bring up a window with a time-clock where Blogger indicates it is publishing your entry.

Introduction to Computer Graphics: Vector vs Bitmap

Hello Students,

What does this car have to do with video games? Today's lesson is about the two image creation methods that exist in digital media. Raster or bitmap graphics are what most computer users are familiar with... these could be a photograph on a website or a video that you watch. The other method is vector graphics.

It's all about connections. Pierre Bezier was an engineer and one of the founders of geometric modeling and in the field of calculating curves for CAD/CAM systems and was a leading engineer at Renault, bringing this technology to auto manufacturing. Early video games such as space invaders used vector graphics also. Now a bezier curve can exist in 2 dimensions or three, modern video games can use 3D models that are comprised of "Nurbs" or "Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines". These are basically 3D objects that are created by bezier curves and have "surfaces" between the curves to create a shape. These are all examples of vector graphic technology being used in different ways.

Raster or Bitmap graphics are also used in video games. Early games used small graphics called "sprites" to create animated video game characters. In modern 3 dimensional games, bitmap graphics are used to create textures on 3D graphics.

Let's Make Some Pixels! Bitmap Icon Art Assignment:

• Open Photoshop and create a new document, set width to 12 pixels and height to 16 pixels and resolution to 72DPI
• Go to the photoshop PREFERENCES menu and choose GUIDES, GRIDS AND SLICES and set the GRIDLINE to EVERY 1 PIXELS and the SUBDIVISION to 1
• Select the BRUSH TOOL and in the BRUSH OPTIONS set brush size to 1 Pixels
• Create a new layer in the layer palette
• Begin to draw your image, use different colors from the COLOR PICKER and paint your image in square by square
• When artwork is complete, scale it up by using the IMAGE menu, and clicking IMAGE SIZE, increase the pixel dimensions and set the RESAMPLE IMAGE option to NEAREST NEIGHBOR-PRESERVE HARD EDGES
• When finished create a new folder for this project, then go to File > Save for Web and Devices, Set file format to GIF and save a file for turning in. Then go to File > Save and save a Photoshop version of your file.
• When you are done creating Mario try creating your ow character from scratch! Use your imagination and make a cool character. Want to challenge yourself? Ask me how to animate your pixel art!

Previous Student Examples:

Vector Assignment, Transform Box to Car:

"Box to Car" Illustration created by R.O.P. student Josh Booker

• Open Illustrator and create a new document, File>New
• Draw a box about 4X4 inches
• Click on the Pen Tool and hold to reveal the hidden tools and select the Add Anchor Point Tool (it looks like the Pen Tool with a + next to it)
• Begin clicking on the box outline to add anchor points, several to each side
• Switch over to the Direct Selection Tool and Click-Drag an anchor point to move it
• Continue dragging your anchor points to modify the shape
• Keep adding anchor points and moving them to create the outline of an automobile
• Add more anchor points and adjust to smooth out your creation
• Use Illustrators simple drawing tools such as the circle tool and pen tool to customize your creation. Add colors too!
• When finished create a new folder for this project, then go to File > Save for Web and Devices, Set file format to GIF and save a file for turning in. Then go to File > Save and save an Illustrator version of your file.

Previous Student Examples:

Thank you...

Thank you to all my great students from this semesters CTE Graphic Design class. There were some very impressive portfolios and projects and I thank you all for your hard work and dedication. I know every student walked away with new skills, insight and abilities from CTE Graphic Design.

It was my honor to provide you all with high quality CTE education in the Arts, Media and Entertainment pathway.

This blog will become active again in the fall semester 2018-19

{ Seth Wilson }