fmx210-3 digital media

 So... it was bad. This is what I came up with.  Like what is that even. And the worst part is I really like the idea, I just couldn't figure out how to make it actually good. Like it's all just basic shapes. So that's that on that. I think if anyone else took this idea it'd probably be really good, I just can't draw or do anything artistic apparently. How lovely.  It seriously took me forever to even figure out how to make a new gradient on the project, and it wouldn't even export with the background color I wanted for it. Even though I was connecting images, nothing just looked right, and then I eventually had to let it go because it was not happening. 

 This week we're working on typography in Illustrator, with the intention of making a logo. I, personally, am not a huge fam of most of the fonts on Illustrator, and downloading new ones are proving to be a little difficult, but still, we move. I'm also not a big fan of really intricate and detailed logos. Like, I appreciate ones that look like they've had a lot of time and care put into them, or those with cool ideas behind them, but I don't feel like those kinds of logos represent me. I think of myself as very boring and kind of basic (but not in a bad way!) so I think I'm just going to make a classic logo with my initials or name or something. 

 So our cartoon is due this week, and I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out what do to for it. I have plenty of ideas in my head, but Illustrator is literally so hard to use that I can't even make what I want to make. I tried to practice and do some tutorials over the break, but I must be missing something because I can't seem to make anything even remotely nice looking that isn't a basic shape. I also just know that everyone else is going to have something amazing, and I'm going to present mine and be so embarrassed because even though I'm still learning I just hate being bad at things and I'm not getting any better at this. I'm going to keep trying but this is not looking good for me. 

 Since we're still not having class, and the new season of the Netflix show Shadow and Bone  came out yesterday, I'm going to write about that. I think it's absolutely awesome. While the plot doesn't exactly follow the books, it's still super enjoyable, and really nice for fans of the book series to see their favorite scenes played out on screen from a cast they love. The costuming and set design is even more stepped up from the first season, making you feel like you're completely immersed in the world of the story.  The digital effects have even been brought up a notch, especially with the effects showing the light powers from the main character. In the first season we don't get to see much of what the character has to offer through her power, but this season, as she has come into her own, we see her power manifested in a really fantastical way that looks even cooler than the previous season. The villain's powers have also been boosted, as his own power...

     Although we aren't having class this week, I still figured I would write some entries here for this week. During my spring break, I'd say the most interesting thing I did was watch Cocaine Bear, which was freaking awesome. While it wasn't like an Oscar winning, cinematic recipe for the ages, I thought it was a masterpiece in its own way. Even if it's based on a true story, a bear on cocaine is just the best idea in the world and I can't believe it hadn't been made sooner.       In terms of digital effects, it wasn't really anything special. The gore and the actions of the bear were pretty cheesy and what you would expect from a movie like Cocaine Bear, but honestly that made it even better. At the end of the day the mother and kids live happily ever after, and you get to leave the theater with the story from when you watched Cocaine Bear, so I think it's a win-win scenario for the characters and the audience.  Final Rating: 100000000/10

 I just complied and compressed all my files from this first half of the semester (I hope I compressed them right), and just wanted to update on how the semester has gone so far. I honestly didn't quite know what to expect starting this class this year, but I am really proud of what I have been able to accomplish with my projects so far, especially in Photoshop. We started with Midjourney, which is incredibly fun to use, and I never would have found out about about a resource like that if I hadn't been in this class. It took a minute to get the hang of it at first, but now I have a really good understanding of what keywords I need to use within the prompts to get what I want, as well as how to change the orientation or the quality of the photo. Then we started using Photoshop, which when we started I really thought I was never going to be able to use it because it was so complicated. But, as we did projects with it and were able to practice with the program, it became much easi...

 Our homework for this weekend was to create an image of a landscape and a portrait in Illustrator. It was... definitely something. Very frustrating. Very anger-inducing. I thought that the portrait was a lot easier to create than the landscape, partially because the picture of Taylor Swift I used had more set shapes than the landscape.  For the landscape image, I used a picture of a formation from Red Rock Park, but I think the scraggly formation of the rocks and all the different shades of colors made it even harder to trace the image and paint it. Even trying to paint in the different shapes proved difficult, because when I tried to use the paint brush tool, it would only let me use like two different brushes that didn't work for what I needed, and the size of the brush wouldn't change either, so the painted parts just didn't end up how I wanted them.  I tried a few different methods of creating the image, included the trace tool, but it really didn't work how I need...