Final Project

Design Rationale

Script

I remember the first time I ever felt accomplished. I was four years old in my Grandparent’s house on a cold winter day.  My grammy handed me a whisk and let me mix together the ingredients to make brownies.  An hour later the brownies came out of the oven, and I tasted my creation. I was so proud that I had helped create something so delicious.  This was the day I realized that cooking and baking would be part of my life forever and the first time I was ever proud of myself.

As I got older, I started cooking and baking more independently. I started experimenting with different spices and flavors and deviating from recipes I found in my Mom’s old cookbooks and in magazines. By age 10 I was cooking family dinner for my family of 6 at least once a week. I loved cooking all types of food: Italian, Asian, Mexican, anything challenging and interesting. Needless to say both my parents loved this hobby of mine, though many times I would stay awake reading recipes with a flashlight under my sheets staying up far past my bedtime.

I have used this hobby as a stress reliever as well as something to celebrate with.  I have been able to share this with my younger siblings as well as my friends the way that my grandmother shared it with me.

I will never have enough gratitude to my grandmother for putting that whisk in my hand. Though she passed away a long time ago, I still bake her secret brownie recipe and think of her and how she helped me find something I’m so passionate about.

Questions

Discuss your selection of images. Where you got them and how you processed them. Why are they in the order you placed them? Which image best visually depicts your passion? What transitions and effects did you use? Ken Burns, etc. How do they tell a story?

The images I selected were of foods that I have either cooked in the past, or thought looked like interesting meals to experiement with. Other photos, such as the whisk or the cookbook, were only there to follow the story line and give visuals to the story I was telling about my love for Cooking. I got these photos mostly from Morguefile, though I did use some from Creative Commons. Some of the photos, such as the older man wearing a chef uniform, were my own.

The images are in the order they are in because it somewhat follows the storyline. When I am talking about brownies and the whisk, the pictures of brownies and whisk appear.  When I am discussing the different types of food I like to cook, I show Mexican, Asian, and Italian foods. This helps the storyline flow somewhat better by using visual aids.  The images of the people cooking together depicts my passion the most, because for me it is a very social event that helps me bond with my family and friends.  I used the “swap” transition the majority of the time because I thought it was a nice transition for food. I also utilized the Ken Burns effect as well.  This helps transition the storyline smoothly.

Discuss the audio process. Where did you record your voiceover? Where did you get your music? Your sound effects? How did you get it into the project? How did you get the project on Vimeo? Thoughts about IMovie.

I recorded the voice over straight into iMovie. This was somewhat challanging, and if I was to redo the project I would probably do the audio process in audacity.  I got my music from a Youtube video that my sister created.  She is the pianist in the audio file.  To get into the project I reflected on the many memories I have shared with family and friends cooking and baking with and for them.  To get the project on Vimeo, I exported the file from iMovie to my desktop as an MP4 and was then able to upload the video to Vimeo. I then embedded the video here in WordPress.  I really like iMovie, the only thing I find difficult is the fact that you must sit down and do the entire project in one sitting. It would be much more convenient to be able to save it in a flash drive and do the project wherever and whenever when the creative juices start flowing.

Power Point with Design Rationale

Jason Mraz

Design Rationale:

Slide 1: On the first slide, I was able to place the Jason Mraz audio into the Powerpoint. After many hours of learning Audacity on my laptop, I was finally able to create the audio portion of the power point. I chose two of his more popular and upbeat songs to represent his upbeat and quirky personality.

Slide 2: In this slide I chose facts to share about Jason Mraz. Again, I wanted to portray his quirky nature, so I chose random fun facts that many people do not know about him already. I also learned how to use the fade tool, so you can only read one portion of my slide at a time. This makes it easier for the reader to pay attention and not get distracted by the overall slide.

Slide 3: In this slide, I used an album cover and chose to make the songs come in extremely fast as to save time. At the end of the slide I gave a long pause for the reader to be able to read all the song titles in the album.

Slide 4:This slide was one of the most challenging for me. I found it very difficult to work the timing correctly and make sure that all the facts were coming in and had appropriate timing and a cohesive nature with the transitions.

Slide 5:In the fifth slide, I provided a link to Jason Mraz’s website, and showed pictures of him playing guitar and relaxing. I wanted pictures that portrayed his easy-going music, so I shared pictures of him playing the acoustic guitar.

Challenges I Overcame: I had a very difficult time mastering Audacity because I had never used it before. Through this project I learned the features and tools on Audacity and am now very aware of the program. I had also never used transition tools in a Power Point Presentation, and I belive learning this was very important for future presentations for Roger Williams and future employers.

Vimeo Public Service Announcement

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Bind in Blow Out Card

 

 

 

Concert Poster and Design Rationale

Design Rationale:

1). I somewhat used the oval format.  Jason Mraz’s hands form a circle and there is a somewhat round and circular feel to the whole poster.  I used this because I really liked this picture of Jason Mraz and I thought it would work well for a concert poster.  Additionally, the poster is still very simple and shows the information.

2). I thought the black and white colors made the poster more dramatic and yet kept it simple at the same time.  After experimenting with different colors and fonts for the words, I decided the poster looked best completely in black and white.

3).To meet the 50% rule, I changed the photo to black and white and cropped it so that it would fit better for the size of the poster.  I also used the blur tool to try and blur the hand and make it less significant.  Even if this did not meet the 50% rule, I would probably still be exempt because I am a student using this for academic purposes only and I am not looking to make a profit off of this assignment.

4). I encountered many problems with InDesign. Firstly, InDesign was having a lot of troubling opening when I fist went to begin the project.  Secondly, I had a significant amount of trouble adjusting from PhotoShop over to InDesign and using the different tools available.  I overcame this by spending extra time outside of class in the Mac Lab trying to familiarize myself with the program and what it had to offer. InDesign was similar to Photoshop in many ways, but it offered different tools and had a somewhat different set up than Photoshop did. I would have preferred to use Photoshop for the whole project, considering there were some elements of the poster I had to do in Photoshop then bring into InDesign.  I feel as though it would have been easier to do the whole thing in InDesign.

Paragraph 2: Name the fonts you use and the reason you chose each. What size is each font? How did you position the words and why? Choice of color.

Animated Font Poem

Design Rationale:

1) For my images, I chose to do a clock with a sunrise coming up in the background. I chose these to represent the words “time” and “rising” as well as “glory”. I brought these images into Photoshop and changed the transparency of the photos and layered them together so you could see both the clock and sunrise.  I chose to keep both the images at their original size so it would look like the sunset was being reflected in the clock.  I did this by going to Image–>Image Size, and made both images 72 pixels and the same size.

2) I wanted the order of the words in the poem to appear one or two at a time and have them appear in order.  I also wanted to manipulate the words “falling” “rising” and “fall” to move fluently.  I did this by moving the words upward or downward a very small amount at a time and creating new frames.  I did not want it to be awkward and choppy so I moved the time to 0 so it would move fluidly.

3) I am most proud of conquering the timing of the words “rising” “falling” and “fall” and making them all fluent while keeping the rest of the poem on time. I am also proud of how the sunrise in the sky looks like it is reflected in the face of the clock.

If I had more time I would have worked on a different color scheme for the piece.  I also would have tried to change the fonts around to make the words look more natural and less choppy.

Hands Exercise

Contact Sheet

Design Rationale:

1) First, I dragged the photo of the chipmunk into Photoshop.  I changed the Image Size to 1 and 1.5 so that the photo would fit into the box.  I then changed the resolution to 1200 dpi and placed it into the last box.  I then had to resize the image again while in World, so that it would fit into the box. Next, I changed the photo to 600 dpi and placed it in the box labeled “600 dpi”. I repeated this with 300 dpi and 72 dpi.

2) After bringing the photo of crayons into Photoshop, I resized the image so that it would fit into the screen.  I then went to Image->Mode and then I changed the tones and colors of the picture.

3) In this row I found a picture of a sailboat in the middle so that I could work on cropping and centering the photo. After bringing the photo into photoshop and resizing it, I resized the original image and dragged it into the landscape box.  I then used the crop tool to select only the part of the image that i wished to see.  I cropped by hitting the crop tool, placing the dimensions I wanted my crop to be, and dragging the crop box from the very top of the page to the bottom.  I then chose the part that I wanted to crop. I did this in a square shape and also in a portrait shape.

4) In this row I downloaded a photo of New York City.  I chose an item in the far back that no one would really notice with the naked eye.  I then used the crop tool to zoom in further and further. After cropping several times, the image of the woman laughing on the far left of row 4 became prominent and clear, where before you couldn’t really make out what it was.

5) In this row, I downloaded a photo of a ferris wheel. After resizing the image and bringing the original into representational, I cropped the photo several times closer and closer until the photo was so abstract one could not tell what the image was.  On the far left of row 5 one wouldn’t be able to tell that it was a portion of a ferris wheel.

6) In this row, I chose a photo of Angelina Jolie and used different tools in photoshop to change the way the picture looked. I then used the Filter tool to change the picture to Ink Outlines, Clouds, and Paint Double.

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but rising every time we fall.” -Confucious

Design Rationale:

Why I Chose the Saying and Who Said It:

• I chose this saying by Confucious because is a positive message about how we need to keep trying and get up every time we fall, and the fact that we keep trying is a feat in itself.

List of Fonts and Reasoning Behind Them:

• greatest-Lucinda Calligraphy
• glory-Lucinda Fax
• falling-Times New Roman (italics)
• rising- Myriad Pro
• fall- Myriad Pro (italics)

I chose these fonts because I liked the combination of cursive and non cursive letters, in addition to the contrast between the italics and regular versions of fonts. I tried to keep the font for falling and rising simple so that greatest could be emphasized.

Explain the Design (Word Positioning, Colors, and Effects Used):

• I wanted to keep the word positioning somewhat spaced out and orderly while still portraying the visual aspect of the word.  I originally did not want to place the words every and time into the X formation, but otherwise it did not look balanced.
• I wanted to keep the color scheme extremely simple by using white, black, and different shades of yellow.  This gave the piece some life but also kept an emphasis on the words and the meaning of the saying.
• I used the distort tool to create a sliding or falling effect for the word fall.  I manipulated this as best I could to create the illusion that the word is falling while still keeping the X shape of the piece.

How I Overcame Obstacles and What I Am Most Proud Of:

• One of the obstacles I faced was trying to create the X shape with the words falling, rising, every, time, and fall while still trying to portray the words visually.  To do this I used the warp text tool to distort the word fall into a slide formation to portray a falling or sliding down motion.  I also positioned the letters of falling in a downward slant and rising in an upward slant to portray falling and rising.
• Another obstacle I faced was the color scheme. I wanted to stick to the scheme of black, yellow, and white to keep things simple.
• I am most proud of creating the X shape.  I worked on this shape for a long time to try and make this look balanced, and I feel as though I was able to create the X shape while keeping all the fonts and designs different.