Blog Logos

This week for my digital arts class at The University of Toledo we learned all about vector graphics. Our assignment was to use Method Draw to create two different logos for our blog. I have worked with vector graphics before with different software's and have really enjoyed it, but I did not really like Method Draw. I did not like Method Draw that much because it was missing so many editing features that I am use to using. I am use to there being a lot more editing tools to make the graphics cleaner and better. With that being said, I did my best with what I had to work with. The foot logo is not exactly what I had in mind, but they did not have a "flip" tool, only a rotate tool, so I was unable to create exactly what I wanted too. Overall I am pleased with my work though based on the tools given.

These may seem rather basic, but the block was a lot more difficult to create on Method Draw than I thought it would be, and the shape of the foot was a lot more difficult than I though it would be either. Although, I do like the 'basic' look of the two logos I created because they are just enough to catch your eye. ALSO, I would have liked them to have a transparent background, but for some reason was not able to save them from the website, so I have to screenshot them and crop them. Thanks for viewing my blog! Hope you enjoyed my logos.

Typography Mason

This week for my Digital Media class at The University of Toledo we are learning and creating images based on TYPOGRAPHY. Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. Overall I found typography to be very interesting. With typography, not all images come out the way you would like them to, so it took me awhile to choose the best photo to use for this project.

This image above is of my son and was created on GlassGiant.com. I used an 80 width and kept the font size small. At first I was not sure if people would be able to see what this image was, but after asking a few friends, they could immediately see it was a face and figured out that it was Mason (because why would I use anyone else's face for my projects when I have this adorable little boy).

The three images above of my son were created using Text-Image.com. Text-Image is an easy to use ASCII generator with a few different editing options. The first image is an ASCII converted photo and I chose to keep the background white, but changed the font color of the text to blue. I really like how the blue turned out with the white background. The second image is a HTML converted photo. It is hard to see (unless you click on the photo an make it bigger), but I chose normal font and used MASON as the text sequentially throughout the entire photo. This was probably my favorite photo from this portion of the assignment. Last, but not least, the third image is a Matrix converted photo. There were not many editing options for this conversion, but I chose to add extra contrast so you could see Mason's face a little better.

This image I created using Tagxedo.com. On this website they had lots of great examples that expanded my mind on all the different ways you could create word clouds. Word clouds are visual representations of text which may include additional imagery. For the image I created, I based it around all the love I have for my little family. This was my overall favorite website to use and I love the outcome of this project! Tagxedo.com was very easy to use and had a lot of great editing options. It was really hard to chose a font and color theme because I loved them all. I would use this website again to create a piece very similar to the image above to print out on a canvas and hang it in my living room.

 

These three images above were (in order) created using online typography generators: Textorizer 1, Textorizer 2, and Excoffizer. The first photo I used Textorizer 1, which was used on a picture of Mason laying down wearing his gray and blue jacket. Textorizer 1 takes words of your choosing and throws them onto the picture like confetti. The words I chose for this image were: Mason, baby, love, pride, & joy. I chose those words because they describe the love I have for my son. The second photo I used Textorizer 2. This online typography is really awesome. You can add random words, or you can use a quote. The quote I used for the picture of my boyfriend and son is from the song "It Won't Be Like This for Long" - by Darius Rucker. The quote is, "It won't be like this for long. One day we'll look back laughing at the week we brought him home. This phase is gonna fly by, so baby just hold on." I chose those lyrics, because our son is growing up way to fast already, and time is really flying by. I decided to keep the words a little smaller and closer together to really bring out the colors of the photo in the background, and had the words big enough to read, but not take over the entire picture. The third and final photo was created using Excoffizer. This was a lot different than all of the other websites. This image is based on using wavy lines, and does not use words or phrases. I kept the lines in this picture close so you could see Mason better. I like how skinny the lines are; you really have to focus on the picture to see how wavy the lines really are. I also like how the pitch black areas are completely filled in with solid black; it gives your eyes a couple places to rest.

Generative Art

This week for my Digital Art class at The University of Toledo we used three different online applications to create our own unique artwork.

Scribbler: Scribbler was the first online website I used. I found scribbler very easy to use when drawling the original picture, but found it frustrating that you could not save the image along the way; actually you aren't able to save it at all. I was surprised the only way you could 'save' your final image was by taking a screenshot our your computer screen. That just takes more time; time that I do not really have with a newborn. Overall I liked scribbler because it was not to complex. I choose to create the image of a bunch of flowers and a cat. I choose to keep them both black scribbles because I thought it really helped the picture pop. I took me several different times to get a final result that I liked. Overall I am pleased with my final outcomes and enjoyed this very simple to use website.

 

Scribbler Too: The next online website I used it called Scribbler Too. It is an advanced version of of the scribbler website I wrote about above. I love how they added the 'save' feature to this website. It makes it very easy to save your image along the way. Also another great update to this Scribbler Too is that it offers the ability to upload a photo and draw/scribble over it. That feature is awesome and allowed me to create such awesome images. Another thing I like about Scribbler Too was the wider variety of brush tools. With more options of brush tools, it allows everyone to use and create a lot of different scribbled effects. I choose the use a picture of a butterfly and a flower for my first photo. I used various amounts of fuzziness and diameters to create a fuzzy effect over the butterfly only. I think that really makes the photo pop, rather than have scribbling the entire photo. The second photo I chose to recreate is my rocket ID photo of myself. I was unsure of how successful this would turn out, but I think overall it turned out great! You can really see the volume in this photo and it kind of actually looks like me.

 

Flame: Flame is the third online website we used for this weeks assignment. Flame is a lot different than the first two websites we used above. Flame is an online site where you basically drawl with fire. I found this site to be a lot of fun to play around with and it was definitely my favorite site of the three. I created two images that reflect all of the love I have for my son. The first picture is of a heart, representing the one of a kind love I have for my son. For this image I used various brush sizes and blue/green gradients. I also varied the amount of 'noise' in the strokes. The second picture is of my sons name, Mason. This image took me awhile to perfect, and this is my favorite of all of them that I did with his name. I used a smaller stoke to write his name and a bigger stroke to create the background. I again used blues and greens for this picture because I think they will be his favorite colors (but we'll see about that, lol). For the blue in the background I used a bigger stroke and added more 'noise' to the stroke. Overall, I love the results of these images. They are something special to me because they showcase how much I love my son.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by my blog and taking the time to check out my artwork.









Video MashUp

 

For the project this week in my digital arts class at The University of Toledo we were to take our audio from last week, made on soundations.com, and make a video smashup. A video smashup is basically taking multiple pre-existing videos on the internet and cutting bits and pieces of the videos to make one final project. While completing this project, it was a little difficult at times, but it was also kind of fun and I really enjoy the outcome of all my hard work.

The videos I chose to use for my video smashup are mainly from a website called archive.com. I found archive.com easy to use because you did not have to sign up to download any of its contents. However, I did find it a little difficult to find exactly what I wanted at times. I think archive.com could do a better job categorizing their videos. The only video clips I did not get from archive.com were the ones of the cat. I got the video of the cat off of YouTube and was very happy to find out that downloading and saving videos on YouTube is very easy.

For editing my video mashup I used Windows Movie Maker. As a class we were first instructed to use a website called FileLab.com, and I do not recommend this website to anyone. I’m a rather smart girl, and after literally almost two hours, I gave up on trying to download the stupid thing. (Well I should that it had downloaded successfully several times, but the website never opened like it should have.) With that being said, I was happy to see that Windows Movie Maker was easy to download and really easy to use. When editing I just added the clips I wanted and placed them accordingly to my audio. The cat video is the only video I really had to cut and paste. All of the cat clips are from the same video, so I had to cut out certain sections of the video to make my smashup. Cutting and “splitting” the video was not hard to do at all… the only thing that was difficult was trying to time out how much of each clip I needed.

Overall I feel like I was rather successful making my first ever video mashup. After getting an editing software to download I had a lot of fun creating it. The video clips of the cat are my favorite because they are just so random; but random is good when creating a video mashup. I can’t really say I would change anything about my project, because I like the outcome of it… but maybe if I could have taken more time on it, it may have turned out better. BUT I have a baby coming this week and a full time class schedule, so I’m trying to complete as much work as I can now so I don’t fall behind.

Baby Booming

My latest assignment for my Digital Arts class at the University of Toledo was to create an audio mashup using soundation.com. I found this website very easy to use after watching a few tutorials on youtube. With that being said, I highly enjoyed this assignment and recommend soundation.com to anyone who is interested in learning how to make background music and/or DJ'ing type music.
I found this assignment especially fun because my brother and his friends are big into making their own music like this. It was neat to be able to create something similar to what they do, even though their audio editing is way more complex and high-tech than what I have created.
As for the name of my soundtrack, I just wanted to keep it with the theme of my blog. It was the first thing that popped in my head, which might be due to the fact that I saw someone post on Facebook yesterday that 2015 must be the new baby boom, lol.

Onesie Typology

This week for my Digital Art class at the University of Toledo we learned about typologies. We were to shoot a series of photos and create our own typology. This assignment is inspired by the work of Hilla and Bernd Becher who took a series of photos of industrial sites and made a grid display of the resulting images.
For my typology I chose to shoot of series of onesies. To put all 16 images together and create the final project I used Pixlr's Advanced Photo Editor. With tutorials on how to complete this assignment I found Pixlr very easy to understand. I found it interesting how drastically the background color changed in all of the pictures. The background is actually a baby blue blanket, but some of these images would convince you otherwise; but I think the different colored backgrounds is really neat and helps your eye bounce around the entire image even more. Overall I was very happy with how this project turned out, and  makes me even more excited for my son to get here! Did I mention there's less than two weeks until my due date?

Urban Napoleon

This week for my Digital Media class we were to take our Urban Landscaped photos and make a video collage of them. I used animoto.com to create this presentation of my photos and highly recommend it. Animoto is very easy to use and comes with numerous pre-made styles to choose from. The style I chose for this particular project was called "Frayed Edges". I chose this one because it looked neat and goes very well with my urban landscape photos. On animoto there are also some customization features, so you can edit how your final product appears. You can also choose to use your own music or use a song on their website. I chose to use one of their songs, simply because I do not have music on my laptop and because I liked the song chose.

The Fishing Hole

For my Digital Arts class at The University of Toledo we were to take pictures of Urban Landscapes last week, and were to edit them this week. Out of all the pictures I took and edited, this is my favorite. It has a lot of meaning to me because it one of the spots in Napoleon where my boyfriend Corey and I go fishing together. Well he mainly does the fishing… I just keep him company and complain how it’s too hot, haha. Anyways, I took this picture using my iPhone 5c, which has a 4-inch 640x1136 display, and an 8-megapixel rear camera. This photo has the dimensions of 2448x3264. When you multiply that out it gives you a total of 7,990,272 pixels, which is just shy of 8 megapixels. It is nice to know that my camera is taking that best quality photos that it can. I then edited this photo using Pixlr Express, a free online website to edit pictures, and love the way it turned out. When editing the photo I enhanced and made the colors much richer by increasing the contrast and by increasing the vibrancy. I also dimmed the exposure of the light a little bit by -2 brightness. Overall I am really happy with how the final project turned out.