Adobe After Effects is our first step into the world of animation this year. Our very first assignment using After Effects was to animate a bouncing ball. This included individually saving frames in Adobe Illustrator and then importing them into After Effects. Unfortunately, I accidentally saved all of my frames in the wrong color mode, therefore I couldn’t even get them into After Effects, much less animate them. The next time we used After Effects it was to make a motion graphic. This included our name, 5 description words, a picture of ourselves, and a bit of extra flare. The software was relatively easy to use, even though there were billions of mysterious tools scattered across the screen that didn’t seem to do much. The tools I did recognise were the ones that were the same in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, the pen tool, text tool, eraser, etc.
Overall, the layout of After Effects was a bit intimidating, (I felt like a lighting technician or something with all those sliders and buttons!) There were way more different types of keyframes than I thought, anchor points, position, scale, opacity, and so on. I feel like they could have just had one type of keyframe where you adjust whatever you want, but what they did works too. I also wasn't a big fan of the preset timeline length. This was probably easily adjustable, but I didn’t know how and the assignment needed it to be a certain length anyway. But I would still like it better if I could change it as I work, I kept forgetting how much time i had to work with. In the end, - Adobe Illustrator makes animating simple through the use of keyframes. - The preset timeline length is a bit annoying. - It has a lot of similar tools to Photoshop and Illustrator.
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Breaking News! The recent discovery of an elusive new tool has astonished graphic designers once again. Hidden behind the Free Transform Tool, the Puppet Tool has an amplitude of potential for graphic artists working in adobe illustrator. News reporters and journalists have been working overtime to try and explore the newfound uses of this tool. Erica spinnet, artist and web developer writes: “...[the Puppet Tool] has many known uses. For example, it can be used to help artists view their creations in different positions and proportions. Or, as currently used by most developers, could be used to depict a highly advanced species of giraffe-dog, perfectly evolved with elongated necks to better steal food off of counters.” This tool works in unique ways not yet fully understood. When a shape is selected with the Puppet Tool, it immediately undergoes what some call “polyinization”. This means that the shape is filled with polygons, specifically triangles. After the polyinization, circles appear in random locations around the shape. These circles are used to manipulate the shape, similar to stretching silly putty or slime, the circles being where your hand holds the material. These circles can be added or deleted to personal preference though having too many can lead to mass distortion and confusion, caution is strongly advised. Even though this tool was first discovered months ago, there is still very little known about it. A question commonly asked is “why is the icon a thumbtack?” This particular question has yet to be answered. Some theorists claim that it’s a signal from aliens, others believe it is evidence of other ancient societies where thumbtacks were used in religious rituals. All of these are highly controversial theories but there is one thing that all news sources seem to agree on :the Puppet Tool is dangerous and should be handled with care. This tool is new and mysterious, the icon is of a sharp object, and it has been known to cause mass destruction several artworks.
Erica Spinnet, artist and web developer. Erica is the lead investigator in the discovery of the Puppet Tool This picture is of an imaginary person who does not actually exist. I got it from https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ wich gives you fake pictures of nonexistent people that you can use. As I now know, the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator has more uses than just drawing scribbles. Though hard to get the hang of at first, the pen tool is one of the most useful things in Illustrator I have used so far. When drawing a curve with the pen tool you can manipulate it using small “handles” that pop out the sides of each node. These handles let you change the shape and size of the curve, allowing for more interesting and complex shapes.
The pen tool is also great for adding onto pre-existing shapes. The pen tool can also connect to other shapes, it automatically snaps to the edges of other shapes if you hover your mouse nearby. This makes it super easy to create a variety of original shapes and pictures without having to mess around with the shape builder tool. I personally love the pen tool and how I can now create amazing cartoons and shapes only using my mouse, something I've never been able to do before. Although the pen tool can draw almost any curve, it is much harder than necessary to draw a circle or half circle. Because of the way that the handles work, it is very hard to get an even curve using just two nodes. I don’t know if this is already possible but I would like it if there were more handles available for each node, making curves more flexible and complex using less nodes. All in all, the pen tool is extremely useful for making original shapes and unique lines, although more flexibility never hurts. Overall:
I have a hard time deciding between vector and bitmap images. I feel like I have more freedom when using bitmap, but I love the way vector images stay clear when you zoom in. To me, vector graphics are more simple and blocky than bitmap images, if using shapes rather than brushes I would definitely use vector. Besides making badges i’m sure I could do many things using vector images including making logos, designing posters, creating animated characters, and mapping out ideas. Because of the resizability of vector graphics, I would want to use them for more practical reasons, like billboard ads vs magazine ads, posters vs web pages, and anything that would change size and shape frequently. Also, their small file sizes would allow me to have many without taking up too much space. Bitmap on the other hand, I would use for more creative or artistic reasons. When creating digital art I would lean towards bitmap images because of the flexibility of the brushes and freedom of the art style. Typically, art is not drastically resized so there would be no need to have smooth edges when zoomed in. However, you can probably use similar brushes and tools with vector graphics, giving bitmaps less original advantages. Overall, I have had very limited experience with both Bitmap and Vector images and my opinion might change in the future, but based on my experiences, I prefer vector images over bitmap graphics because of their resizability, small file sizes, simplicity, and the fact that they are new and exciting to me.
In the end, I prefer vector images of bitmap because:
Making our visual essays was one of the more frustrating and assignments we’ve done this year. Our story began as a happy photo hunt for examples of the elements and principles of design, taking pictures, narrowly avoiding mr.Hawks, and throwing berries. Even though my phone died in the process, My partner and I managed to get just enough pictures to share between the two of us.
Downloading and sending the photos was the first sign of danger. Drag and drop stopped working. I downloaded them in the wrong form. Turns out I do not know how to use email. It took nearly all period just to send Jack his photos, only to send them three more times. Little did I know that this was just the beginning. With my pictures securely downloaded and in files, I set to work on the task ahead of me - neatly arranging and separating the photos into two different artworks: Elements of Design and Principles of Design. Ignoring the warnings and suggestions from my neighbor, I happily created a beautiful spark graphic with fancy borders and even a matching color scheme. But I should have listened to the warnings. I was supposed to make it in photoshop. In a rush of panic, I scrambled to fix my mistake - starting from scratch with half a period left. My beautiful graphic lay forgotten on another tab. Angry and out of time, I saved my inferior creations, planning to finish my project at home and vowing never to forget my beautiful graphic. And thus, our story ends, although you should remember:
My favorite type of homework in DDA is the sketchbook assignments we have every week on various parts of human anatomy. Using the provided templates, we practice drawing hands, expressions, and poses, working on shading techniques and perfecting proportions to make our drawings as lifelike as possible.
The very first drawing assignment we had (aside from a portrait sketch) was drawing hands. Hands have always been fun to draw because of their intricate shapes and shading, but after six pages of tracing templates it got a bit boring and I ended up resorting to werewolf and pirate hands instead. Even though I've been drawing hands for years, it was harder for me to use the templates because I usually draw my hand by looking at it, this way I can see all the details and shading. When tracing the templates I had to draw by memory rather than sight. The expression sketches were more entertaining than the hands, even if they turned out worse in the end. Unlike the hand sketches, the templates were very useful when drawing faces, something that I struggle with. Nevertheless, even though the expression sketches were more challenging and engaging, I still drifted towards werewolves and goblins on some of them. The most recent sketch work we’ve had so far is the figure poses, which were the most difficult out of all the sketch assignments because they were in such an odd position. I didn’t know whether to add props and items or just leave them floating, I ended up doing a mixture of both. Surprisingly, probably because there were fewer pages and I was focused on proportions, the figure poses were the only sketch assignment where the species stayed consistently human. Overall,
For my first time using photoshop, i’d say it was a positive (although confusing) experience. Although I'd worked with layers before, layer masking was completely new to me and proved to be quite useful and relatively easy to do. Being able to hide certain parts of an image without erasing will definitely come in handy in the future and I'm glad it was one of the first things we learned. In order to create a layer mask, we had to first select the part of the image we wanted to hide. This was considerably easier to do in photoshop compared to other software I've used in the past. The magic wand tool was much simpler and was able to identify different objects more accurately than I expected, although it still sometimes missed bits around the edges. After learning to use layer masks we were taught how to apply color to our artwork. This was much more complicated than I anticipated. Despite what i would like to believe, you can not just use the paint bucket for everything. Changing colors always seemed to remove the details from the image, this is probably my fault but I am determined to blame the program anyway. Another challenging aspect was resizing the canvas. It seemed that whenever I tried to adjust the length or width, even just a little bit, the photo I was working on would suddenly be squished into oblivion or zoomed in close enough to see the pixels. Overall...
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AuthorMy name is Xiomara Colopy. I am a student at DSA and am currently taking Digital Design and Animation 1 . Categories
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May 2020
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