Interterm!

Tomorrow is the last day of interterm, so I thought it'd be apt to talk about the work I've done in my four-week class. Unlike last interterm when I took Precalculus, a course that's obviously not for my major, this time I took a class on digital illustration techniques. It's essentially a crash course in the Photoshop techniques most commonly used by digital artists. As a beginner in Photoshop, I learned a lot of new things in the class and I'm happy I took it.

Here are some of my work that I think turned out pretty well:

This is an assignment on displacement mapping. I thought I'd combine two of my most favorite things in the world: art and cats. The painting is by impressionist Pierre Bonnard and it's actually a really interesting piece of art. It's a painting of Bonnard's cat whom he called "Nood", thus the painting was entitled Nood Bathing when he finished it in 1937.

This next one was probably the most fun to make. The assignment was to swap two different faces and put them in the same background. I chose two amazing yet very different characters, Michael Scott and Daenerys Targaryen, because don't you think it'd be insane if they were put it in the same world? I mean can you imagine how many seconds it'll take for Daenerys to set Michael's obnoxious mouth on fire? 

And here's my first stab at making a logo in Photoshop. I always appreciate a classic and well-designed logo when I see one, but I've never seriously studied graphic design. This was just a small assignment on using the intimidating pen tool to create clean shapes and typography. Most of the class made a personal logo, but I opted to make one for a fictional candy house.

This isn't actually how my logo looked like at first. I made this wonky looking chocolate bar as my initial design, but I realized it's kind of confusing, because people instinctively think the top is the chocolate and the bottom is the wrapper, because that's how chocolate bars are commonly portrayed. After spending some time tweaking it, I decided to just start a new one, just to refresh my mind. And voila, I came up with a candy house that looks cuter and better. 

Lastly, here's my favorite project all month. It's the one I got the best feedback on and also the one I feel most great about. The assignment was to create a 1930's travel poster. I spent a significant amount of time looking up actual posters to get the colors and the layout right.

That's about it for interterm. Spring semester starts next week and I'm really excited! I'm going to take a class on production design and also design theory, along with four other art classes (including another figure drawing class), and I'm just so excited and eager to make more art!