Over the past 2 or 3 years, I don't think I've seen many better movies than Nightcrawler, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. I thought the eerie and suspenseful theme could enable me to put a lot of creativity into this project, and it didn't disappoint. Since the main theme of the movie is illegal filming, I knew from the start I had always wanted a faded out camera in the background to signify the suspense involved in the movie. In the foreground, I had a view of a city skyline to symbolize that it was always being carefully watched over by the main character Louis and his unethical ways. I thought the dark blue colour that surrounds the poster provides viewers with an insecure feeling of horror and crime. I tried my best to have the fonts match what I was trying to convey to the viewer, so I sketched out a Halloween themed font for "Nightcrawler," while I downloaded the other two fonts. All in all, I think this project went well for me, even though I did not time it very well.
Within a world of 7.1 billion people, there are countless opportunities and crossroads where we are forced to make decisions; decisions of who we are, what we represent, and who influences us. Everyone's decisions are different, which makes us all unique individuals whose journeys and paths of the past are one of a kind. One major determinate of the decisions we've made and the decisions we will be making is the type of people we encounter or are influenced by, Whether they're our friends, family, or someone we've never actually met, naturally, we all have someone we model ourselves after, or draw inspiration from, in order to groom ourselves into who we are today. For me personally, my childhood friends, my grandfather, and the Sedin twins have been inspirational characters that have shaped me into who I am today. Although three vastly different people, they all represent different attributes that inspire me.
1. Childhood Friends When I was only 9 years old, my parents decided to send me to school in China. I had lived in Vancouver for all my life, and it was all I had known. In my mind, I was "forced" to leave all my friends and start a new life in China, which was "jail," from everything I had heard about the strict academic regime that existed. However, the three year and a half years I spent in China were 3 of the most influential years of my life for many different reasons. I lived amongst many families who were struggling and attended an elementary school which wasn't exactly highly regarded. However, everyone there seemed to enjoy life just as much; I will always remember the enthusiastic looks and bright smiles at seemingly every minute of the day. Even though to them, I was different, as a Canadian who spoke fluent English and acted in a different manner, they still accepted me in a way that I will forever remember. When I left China in 2010, all 48 of my classmates had prepared individual gifts just for me, and together, they had made a large yearbook-type book to document all our experiences together and their personal information, in case I would forget. Frankly, we live in such a privileged part of the world that sometimes we forget about the more pressing issues in the world, and are too focused in the small problems that we face. Looking back, the love, compassion, and acceptance I received during my tenure in China not only made my childhood unique and unforgettable, but it also opened my mind up to the many things we can do to help each other, even if we reside on opposite sides of the world. From this experience, I now frequently feel the urge to give back to the people who are less fortunate, and yet equally positive in their outlooks towards life. 2. Grandfather Both my grandfathers have played instrumental parts in my life so far. Unfortunately, neither of them are here with us, but they've left a lasting impression on me for the rest of my life. My grandfather on my mom's side especially, however, has been perhaps the most inspirational person in my life. Just like many others living in rural China in the 1970s, he started from basically nothing. Throughout the years, he was able to build up a reputation, and soon became a well respected figure around the growing city we were living in. Through hard work and determination, he was able to become a highly regarded official in the city, and soon earned enough money to raise the family. He later built a hotel in Beijing in honour of the city he had come from, and it is still running successfully today. He is one of the major and only reasons I am able to live a fortunate life today. However, my grandfather furthermore holds more sentimental value to me than anyone else. He was an educator, and wanted the best for me in every single way possible; he wanted me to become a successful and ethical individual, and taught me many life lessons; he was hilarious, outgoing, loving, charismatic, and just about any positive word you can find in the dictionary. He also provided me with my name, which is cool too. Truthfully, my grandfather is one of my motivations to succeed in life's endeavours, I remember he always said to me, "If you get into Harvard, I'll buy you a Ferrari!" I'm probably not getting in to Harvard, but I'm sure as hell trying to make him proud. 3. The Sedin Twins As a huge sports fan, there's always going to be someone I look up to in the sports world. For me, there is no one better than the Sedin twins, not only as athletes, but as people. Growing up for the most part in Vancouver, I have always followed Canucks hockey. My dad had always told me, "I've witnessed Trevor Linden and Markus Naslund throughout their whole careers after coming here in 1994!" For me, I grew up watching the Sedin twins, followed them through their ups and downs, and watched as they've matured and declined as players. From a hockey perspective, there's something about them that's just so admirable; perhaps their telepathic sense of where their brother is on the ice, or perhaps their insane skill that for 16 years now has carried the Vancouver Canucks team, or the fact that they've won many awards and so much respect throughout the league (even though they don't get enough). However, that's only from a hockey fan's perspective. As people, the twins are two of the most consummate professionals in sports, and carry themselves the way you want your leaders to carry themselves. They are the epitome of humbleness and humility, and have shown their massive hearts by donating 1.5 million dollars to the BC Children's Hospital. They are everything you want your role models to be, and personify the type of professional and individual I strive to become in the future. Since I'm a football fan, I decided to take this route in creating my lampooning project. The main idea here is to satirize as many football related themes as possible coinciding with the NFL Playoffs Wild Card Round.
Using high tech cameras, I was able to shoot really pleasing pictures of a football and my own foot respectively to incorporate into the design. The challenge here was to make these two separate shots look the part, since I wasn't able to take a picture of own my foot with high socks and cleats at school with uniform on. Taking the picture of my own foot was especially difficult, since I had to get my mother to take the picture at home with a fairly old camera and an obviously difficult angle. I thought the results ended up very well however. Using photoshop, I was also able to incorporate a suitable background for this particular design, which I will explain shortly. I used the background of field goal posts, and another image found online of NFL linemen to bring the design into "action." I really liked the fonts used by the actual magazine "Pro Football Weekly," so I decided against creating my own font for the magazine title and used theirs instead. FYI, "Pro Football Weekly" is not actually a satire read. So the idea: The overarching and most prominent design here is obviously the purple outstanding font of "Vikings Devastated." Basically what happened was: the Minnesota Vikings kicker had the game on the line, and an easy chip shot field goal to make that is usually converted over 99% of the time, in order to win the game, and he missed. The phrase, "Lace' em up, lace' em in," refers to the fact that the laces on the football were facing the kicker, which might have potentially affected the direction of the kick. I actually wasn't sure what I was gonna do with the shot of the football at first, until this event came to fruition; so really, it was coincidental and perfect timing that completed this design. The other parts of this design satirize events which had occurred in the other 3 games of the NFL Wild Card Round, announce the upcoming playoffs schedule, along with a shot at comedian Steve Harvey (no explanation needed there). I think I've spent more time on this design than I have on any other design yet, so to see how it turned out overall, I am fairly pleased. This project has also opened me up to many photoshop functions that I've never used before, which was eye opening. My favourite part of making this design was staying up until two A.M.. to finish it off. Originally in class, I used chalk to draw up a pretty nice ampersand from what I remember. However, I've unfortunately lost the picture and I have yet to retrieve it. So here is Ampersand 2.0.
I thought I would be a little creative with the ampersand here, so I ended up drawing an ampersand that does not resemble an ampersand too much; This could be a good thing or bad thing, but I think the design turned out fairly well. I was running low on creativity outside of the ampersand so I decided to write the first part of the word ampersand "AMPERS" within the large gap in the design (in order to complete the word 'ampers&.') 1. Because of the nature of the project: designing a magazine cover, I will be using a photographic subject as my background. This will also be a new challenge for me.
2. I will be using a typeset font, to make the design look more authentic. 3. My magazine will be exploring sports. 4. Most likely, I will be using an existing magazine for this design. 5. Obviously, just shooting photography is a challenge in itself. Instead of making the magazine stand out, I am looking to make the magazine look as authentic and professional as possible. I had a lot of trouble originally coming up with a good quote that had to do with Autumn. It was especially hard since there was a specific word minimum. Eventually, I decided that I'd go with a lame joke: "What did the tree say to (the) Autumn? Leaf me alone!" I didn't want to overthink things, so I just drew up a leaf, a tree and went with it.
Now, for the font, I planned on going with something fairly relaxing, I think it turned out well, although I have realized that the lowercase letters may look a bit too simple. I actually screwed up a little bit in the process of writing the joke, putting an unnecessary "the" after "say to." I left if there because I liked the concept of having roots attach to the words. I tried implementing a few other parts in the piece as well. In the middle, are the chain of leaves separating the left and right sides; not that it was totally necessary, I just wanted an extra look to it. I also thought that the orange cloud was the best representative of the word Autumn, Overall, however, I think a big mistake I made in this piece was that I didn't place the words fairly well. In addition, it may have caused the whole piece to not be as readable as it should be. From an artists point of view, I have no problem reading it as I drew it, though I would suspect other people may not be able to. For the free-style project, I decided to go with a very simple motto, "don't stop believing." My idea for this motto came quite easily, as in my head I was humming tunes of Journey's "Don't stop believin'," and so I decided to go with the trio of words right away. This was also the first time I tried something out on a black piece of paper, so it was definitely felt like a challenge at first.
I wanted to use the previously learned concept of contrast in the piece, as I felt like I had success doing so before. The obvious choice was for me was to contrast "don't" and "believing," so I did. Since the word of emphasis in this quote is "Believing," I wanted to make it stand out more, in terms of font. For "stop." I used the octagonal stop sign, which I thought worked out very well. Also, in order to show contrast, I decided to colour in the space surrounding "stop," and leave the actual word black, as opposed to the two other words. At the end, I added the "fast forward" and "rewind" buttons in order to spice the piece up a little bit. I thought it fit in with the motto quite well, as they are signs of continuance, which reiterates the point of the motto. I was fairly pleased with how this turned out for something this simple. I don't think I overused anything which I may have in the past, and gave it a nice, clean look. If there was anything I could change, it's the colouring scheme of "believing," I wanted to colour it a different colour for contrast, but it ended up being lighter, which defeated my purpose of having it as the word of emphasis. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2016
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