Assignment 2 // Personal Identity // Graphic Design

            My strongest technical aspect of this work was how the animated crowd/stage looks surrounding the picture of the band on the stage. I like how the drawn hands and crowd mixes in with the real crowd and the actual hands that are being raised towards the band. I also like how it isn't to crowded with added in layers because the way the picture appears with only the drum kit, guitar, and crowd/stage is complete. I could have improved on how I looked for images to add on top of what I already had. I kept adding things originally that I thought would look nice but it just made it look kind of odd but I eventually figured out how to make it look nice and work well. 

          I thought coming up with one solid idea to use was easy. Right after we got the assignment I knew I was going to focus on something that had to do with music because I love music. I didn't think any other concept for this would have really revealed anything about me because music is an important part of my life. I thought determining how many layers to use was difficult because I originally had about ten ideas at one time and they all showed up on the work and it looked really crowded and not well executed. After that I started hiding some of the layers and then removing them and things then clicked and I finished with this. 

          I demonstrated the objective in this art activity by using one picture that was real and had it built up with things that went along with it in the surrounding space. I realized that if this had too many layers it would look too loud and wouldn't really flow together but once you get past figuring that all out it works really well. If I did this again I wouldn't even have put words in it as I was making it because that took a lot of time and I wasn't happy with it (as you can tell because no words are involved). I would also have tried to find a guitar that matched the drum kit more with faded sections and undefined edges in every section. I feel like changing that guitar wouldn't be that instrumental to it because it doesn't look bad at the top. 

Assignment 1 // Letters // Graphic Design

          The strongest technical aspect of my work is how it actually looks like a pattern. Also the letters don't appear to be letters and you can't really tell which letter I used. I could improve on the way I made it because I didn't set it up to be radial symmetry. I could have placed everything so it appeared in a more radial way. I would have just made it so everything was the same on every single side.
          I thought creating this was pretty easy because I had a lot of ideas and they all just came together while I was making it. I sometimes had too many ideas in my head and it looked kind of crazy but I knew how to change it so it would work and look better. I thought the fact that I never knew when to stop adding letters was difficult because I kept adding things and I didn't know when to stop adding more letters in. Once  I became fully comfortable with how it looked I just stopped adding more layers. I felt like when it had enough layers I knew right away and just stopped working.
          I demonstrated the objective of this art activity by placing the layers symmetrically and creating a pattern that appeared nice visually. I tried to make the pattern not appear to be made with one specific letter and then I made the letters slightly transparent so you could see where the layers overlapped because I thought that looked neat. If I could do this art activity again I would use radial symmetry because I just went with how I thought it looked good and I forgot that it was supposed to be radial symmetry because I was into the design I had been working on. I didn't realize until after it being reviewed that I needed to do that but I think it looks great as it is. I just got fully involved with this design and just went for it.