Since digital art was my original inspiration to take this class I decided to return to editing images in order to re-familiarize myself with what I used to do in my free time. Ever since we started 3D modeling and creating code that was all I did at home as well, but when I stylized one of my pencil drawings in Paint.net I wanted to do more 2D work again. I returned to Paint.net in order to further explore what I could do with the program by stylizing another one of my pencil drawings. The process proved to be harder than I remembered, most likely because the drawing I chose had more shading and graphite smudges than the original one I had done but even so I attempted to add more details. Going into the project I had visualized specific colors for the dragon I had drawn as well as crystals in the background but I quickly realized that while the colors were simple enough, getting crystals to simulate a real crystal texture was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I instead put them in the background and focused my attention more on the dragon, adding details that weren't originally in the pencil drawing. While experimenting with different techniques I found that adding a vignette helped to bring out the features of the dragon and overall made the image look more professional, while a lot of the other options I tried either didn't work as intended or conflicted with one or more layers I used to make the image. Overall while creating this image wasn't as easy as the other stylized pencil photo I made during the school year it was helpful to get back into working with digital art creation as I hadn't practiced for months and being familiar with art production will aid in game production if I would like to digitally plan out designs. Main Points
Software used: (Paint.net download)
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It's hard to believe that just one year ago I was a freshman with no experience with digital art whatsoever. I am proud of the progress I have made working with Photoshop, Premiere, and 3DS Max just in the last year. This progress and the retained knowledge of how to do so has helped me with my current assignments this year and inspired me to work with digital media outside of class as well. For the past few assignments it has been required that we remember how to model from last year, and of course I had no problem doing that. I was almost able to finish the first assignment we were given this week, but the computer took too long to render the final video so I never turned it in. Luckily it was just a refresher so it was not graded, but it effectively reinforced my comfort with 3D modeling because it showed me I was capable of doing all of the work we did with 3D modeling last year, given only three or so days to make it. Retaining this knowledge of how to 3D model will be useful in my future years at DSA and probably even at my future job, but I am still unsure if it will be a 3D modeling based job. Even if 3D modeling doesn't help me at my future job, knowing how to build an effective resume will help me get that job. That and this portfolio are why I enjoy this class so much more than every other class, it actually teaches me skills that may help me down the road in life. Having this experience with digital art and knowing how to make proper job applications are things that actually help me progress in life, and I would much rather progress than work for nothing.
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We are now well into our 3D modeling unit and we're even animating our models now. So far the process has been fun and easy, but somewhat time consuming. I learned most of the features of 3DS Max pretty quickly, so that has made the modeling process a lot easier so far. I am really enjoying animation so far mainly because it auto-generates the animations between keyframes you can set. This makes animating a lot faster than moving objects frame by frame, and let me explore other options I could do with my assignments. However, I don't like the curve editor because I don't understand it and whenever I use it my animation breaks. Besides that though I have enjoyed 3D modeling so far and i hope it continues to be fun. After doing some additional research, I found out that 3D designers can make $55,000 a year using the 3D modeling skills we learned in class. Taken into perspective though, other websites state that teachers make about $55,000 a year as well, so maybe 3D designing is not the best career to pick if you want to be rich. That doesn't mean its a bad career though, many people enjoy having this career because 3D modeling is what they love to do, regardless of the pay for it. Even better, the longer you have a job as a 3D designer the more experience you have with that career, opening up higher positions or even raises that can bring the yearly salary up to $83,000. So all in all, 3D modeling has been going smoothly so far and 3D design could be a future career choice for me if I really get into this 3D modeling.
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Citations: www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/3d-designer-salary-SRCH_KO0,11.htm https://www1.salary.com/NC/high-school-teacher-salary.html Just like with Photoshop, I didn't understand how to use Illustrator at first, but that was expected and that is why learned how to use it over the course of multiple class periods. Even after learning about the pen tool I still didn't really understand the point of using it because it was way too complicated to manipulate. As with most things this can be worked around though, and luckily not much of our work required the pen tool. Getting the practice from working on assignments helped me to understand Illustrator more because I got to personally find out which controls do what and where to find them. I don't know much about Illustrator yet, but so far it has been the same as learning Photoshop although more focused on the selection tool. The speed at which you can work seems to be much faster in Illustrator though, mainly because you can just create a shape then alter it instead of having to alter piece by piece of an image. Illustrator also has practical uses too, many people make a living off of using Illustrator daily. Jobs such as Medical Illustrators and Graphic Designers require the use of Illustrator daily. Medical Illustrators mainly use Illustrator to aid with the teaching of anatomy and surgical procedures by creating visual representations which can also be used in textbooks and pamphlets. Graphic Design is more straightforward, illustrators will literally illustrate images needed for their jobs using Illustrator. Both of these jobs can make $50,000 per year, but Medical Illustrators can make anywhere up to $175,000 per year. Therefore, not only can you make a living off of Illustrator, you can also become rich just by using a simple Adobe software.
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Citations: http://www.mshealthcareers.com/careers/medicalillustrator.htm https://ami.org/medical-illustration/enter-the-profession/careers https://www.bls.gov/ooh/arts-and-design/graphic-designers.htm Recently we've been doing a lot of work in Photoshop and this got me worried about my digital artistic "skills". I was quickly relieved though when I saw that one of our assignments had tutorial videos linked with it on how to draw well in Photoshop. I watched all of the linked videos and followed their examples step by step until I finally understood how to use the tools effectively. At that point I realized that if you boil it down, all you need to be a good digital artist is knowledge of how to use the tools. Many of the examples shown in the videos used filters as well as the burn and dodge tools to add noticeable differences to the otherwise simplistic art they had created. Now that I'm pretty familiar with the tools in Photoshop, I am pretty confident about my digital art skills. I'm sure I'll never be as good as the artists who make beautiful images with only Photoshop, but for now my skills are good enough. As for real life application, many illustrators and animators enjoy how simple it is to make art with Photoshop. The ability to be able to change artwork as well as revert changes and do just about anything in Photoshop helps most people with actual jobs when using Photoshop. Seeing as many illustrators today use the tools of Photoshop to help make art much quicker and better, I can conclude that understanding tools is the most important part of Photoshop. If someone had amazing artistic skills but no idea how to use all of the tools in Photoshop, they would be unable to do anything. Whereas if someone knew how to use all of the tools but didn't have quite as good artistic skill, they would at least have a masterpiece. Therefore, understanding how to use the tools of Photoshop can not only increase your artistic skill but also make it easier to get a job in the digital art industry.
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Citations: http://www.creativebloq.com/computer-arts/how-photoshop-changed-my-life-2108912 and http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshop/2011/04/what-is-photoshop-to-you.html This week has been my favorite week of scientific visualization so far, not only did we get no assignments, but we also got to freely explore in Photoshop. We learned how to use more tools to edit images and make them look better and even applied them to an image we found off of the web. This made class much more fun and interesting, being able to apply what we're learning about to an actual photo helps give better understanding of how it can actually be used. Having no assignments also made class less stressful and I got to focus more on what we were learning about instead of due dates. This has also been the first time I felt like I was using Photoshop as Photoshop, and not just a tool to get work done. Essentially, the free time to use Photoshop this week helped me to actually understand how to use Photoshop and I now feel that I am fluent with Photoshop. I hope we get to use the skills we learned this week in more than just a few assignments because when I think of Photoshop what we're doing is usually the first thing that comes to mind. Like I said though, this has been my favorite week and I hope that the rest of this year is just as fun.
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Last week we learned about color and how to use it for digital art effectively. We first learned about the two main color models, the additive, or light color model, and the subtractive, or pigment color model. The additive color model consists of red, green, and blue as it's primary colors and is used for projected works such as film or computer screens. The subtractive color model has the primary colors of cyan, magenta, and yellow, and is used for printed works such as brochures and magazines. Along with that we learned about secondary colors, which are formed by mixing equal amounts of primary colors. The secondary colors formed by mixing the primary colors of the additive color model form the primary colors of the subtractive color model and vice versa. Besides the two color models, we also learned about the color wheel, which includes all of the colors and is laid out in a way in which colors are related. The color wheel shows color relationships such as analogous, complimentary, split complimentary, and others. It also shows color harmonies such as warm and cool colors which invoke feelings in the viewer. Knowing what colors are used for we can now effectively choose colors for our works and know why the colors we choose look good for it. From additional research I have found out that color television has greatly changed the viewing experience for viewers and also caused mental changes. Studies show that before color television existed people often had monochrome dreams and that some people even today still have monochrome dreams who have watched significant amounts of black and white television. I didn't know this before and I'm glad we learned about color because it made me think about what television was like before it was able to be broadcasted in color.
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Citations: lwww.earlytelevision.org/color.html and http://www.telegraph.co.uk It is only the end of first week of the second quarter and we've already learned several ways to make images more interesting and pleasing to the viewer. The use of perspective, the rule of thirds, the rule of odds, simplification, and negative space can all enhance an image to be so much more than just any ordinary image. Using the rule of thirds can help create a focus point for an image by lining up what you want the viewer to look at with the lines of a 3D grid on an image. The intersections of the lines are the main focus points, instead of the center which most people would think. The lines themselves also create horizontal and vertical areas where objects can lie in an image for extra emphasis while keeping the image simple. The rule of odds can also be used to keep an image simple and create a focus point for it by including an odd number of items in the image (optimally 3). With only 3 items in the image the viewer's eye can either move from one to another and back or focus on only one item if emphasis is placed on it. Simplification and negative space obviously help make an image interesting because with less to look at there is more to focus on; if an image is simple it is more pleasing. Perspective can also be used to make an object in an image more interesting. For example, animals are typically more interesting when at ground level because it shows off the full animal instead of just what is seen from higher angles. In class we practiced understanding how to use these rules and techniques by finding images that used them effectively and explaining how they did so. I enjoyed doing this because we got to use images from games and that made me think about how games I've played have used these rules. It turned out more games than I thought actually use these rules and techniques when showing off the game, and people even use them when taking screenshots of the game.
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Last week in Scientific Visualization we were assigned to create a character from scratch. The moment I got this assignment I thought it'd be easy, especially because we were given four days to do it. When I actually attempted to draw a character, I couldn't get any ideas of what I wanted my character to be. Seeing as my character could have been just about anything, it was hard for me to narrow it down to just one idea for it. I came up with a solution for this problem though; because everyone else would have abstract characters with crazy powers and abilities, I decided to make mine an average guy. I made this decision to symbolize that not every character is a hero who came out of nowhere to save the world. I find it more interesting when the main character is an average guy because it makes it more realistic and more relatable for the audience. To make my character an average guy, I decided to just draw a simple man for my rough sketch, before refining the features in my final draft. This strategy actually worked very well for me, as it allowed me to get through the rough sketch faster which gave me more time to add details to my final draft. The only problem I encountered with this assignment was drawing an accurate human. Nobody is the best artist but we all like accurate drawings, my hunger for accuracy consumed most of my time working on this project until I finally decided it was taking too long and just moved on. Maybe in the future I'll be a better artist and accuracy will be natural for me, but for now it'll just have to be something that I have to accept - I am not the best artist.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools. Main Points
In Fundamentals of Game Art and Design we recently went over the different developments of the digital arts industry from the 1950s to today, we even chose a career we were interested in to make a timeline for, showing how it has developed through the years. Understanding the history of digital art is important because it shows how far we've come and what we can still achieve, progress can always be made, and by using the mistakes of the past we could be the ones to make new methods for digital arts. This lesson caught my attention because it brought light on how much humans have done to make digital art and media an actual career, like the one I researched for the timeline, a texture artist. Just a century ago texture artists for video games didn't even exist, and now it's a career that actually seems quite interesting to me, so interesting I might even take a shot at being one when I get a chance. I've done some additional research on texture artists, and of course the first thing I looked for was their salary, which goes anywhere from $20,000 to $90,000 a year, with the average being about $50,000. Of course that sounded pretty good to me, seeing as I only make $1,000 a year, however I'll have to do a lot of practice in order to get that job, put I'm sure I can do it if I try hard enough to.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools. Main Points:
Citations: www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/texture-artist-career-profile www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Texture_Artist/Salary |
AuthorMy name is Andrew Prichard and the this is my first digital arts class, I look forward to a good year with lots of hard work. Archives
May 2021
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Last updated 5/14/21
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