A simple gallery

So after struggling with a two-hour render time for the last project, I whipped together a simple Galleria project as another assignment.

This is pretty rubbish. I'll admit that readily. I slapped in a couple of divs, and posted it to a remote server. But in all fairness, posting it to the remote server was kind of a maze, since I wasn't really sure what to do with a project that already had a main page and a title and all that, especially since we're all posting to the same remote server. I may have accidentally saved over someone else's assignment, which was only named "Test". I promptly re-submitted mine with a proper name, but I do feel bad for whoever's slideshow was simply named 'test'. I had no idea what I was doing, and I'm guessing if theirs was submitted as 'test', they probably didn't either. My sincerest apologies to whomever I may have accidentally saved over.

Still, even if the simple divs were only simple divs, the page doesn't look too rubbish, so at least I didn't ruin anything else. I hope that's good enough. Soon I'll know enough about Dreamweaver that I'll be able to make much nicer things, though!

A Popup slideshow

This one was a "simple" 3D slideshow. Not hard to make, but exceptionally hard for a computer to render, apparently, as it took me about two hours to render. Images are from me at various points of time. Some of them even have my old surname on them.

I'm not a fan of how the shadows sit on other pictures, and some of the pictures are hovering slightly, but considering the two-hour render time, it wasn't worth going back to fix. I'm not sure why I didn't see the floating before that, however. 

I didn't mind this project, but if I were to do it again, I'd try to do it on a beefier computer. Which says something, as I'm on an (admittedly slightly older) Alienware laptop. 

Hey, at least the art's alright. (The drawing furthest to the left is one I drew just last night and thought looked nice. It's rather washed out here, unfortunately). 

Vinyl Fear

So if this post is a mess, that's because it's being made by phone, and historically, blogger does not work well with these devices. 

The assignment I am submitting was a vinyl sticker project, designed in Adobe Illustrator and turned into cut vinyl. I really like how the finished product looks! If I had to do it again, I would be more cautious about lining up the pieces and draw the raven myself (it's actually a vectored stock image, but if I were to put it in a portfolio, I would draw it myself, and I have every intention of doing so). Below is the sticker put on my bedroom door. I have a problem with things being permanent, though, so it's actually cut out around the plastic and taped to the door so it can be moved elsewhere someday. It's an eight inch sticker, so it's hard to find a good place for it. Right now, it's covering a dent in my door that's been there since I moved in.

Back to R'leah: The Font

So the last assignment I was tasked with was to make a font!

"Cool. What should I make it as?" I asked myself. So I looked at Illustrator's brushes, tinkered a little with the basic stuff, and found myself an idea: Cthulhu mythos!

The former is my capital letters, and the latter is both lowercase letters and symbols. Sadly, the font makes it lose some of its lovely detail when put into use, but it still looks pretty good in my opinion. I haven't yet figured out how to type with it (or submit the text file).

I did, however, decide to use it for a header.

And I think it looks pretty good. Particularly the Xs and Ss, they look pretty fine. I added a few other characters I use fairly often. I think I could get used to making fonts, but it certainly takes a while. In the future though, I'll try to do some less wispy edges, it'l make the font look more substantial. But for cthulhu mythos, a little wispy seems alright to me.

NOTE: We also had an assignment to make a vinyl sticker. I'll be adding this to the blog tomorrow evening, most likely. I want to stick it on a door or somesuch. before I get a picture. I'm quite proud of it, so it will certainly appear in the near future on this blog.

A meal in memory

This is my first video for Digital Design 220, but nothing too new to me. It took a little bit of a refresher to get a handle on it in places, but it wasn't too tough.

For this project, I wanted to give the feeling of a perfectly nice evening (if mysterious), immortalized in a photograph that just gets more tarnished with time. The Victorian floral brushes give a nice flare, before cracks and stains start appearing. 

To make this, I had to edit the original image in photoshop, with brushes on different layers. Then I moved it all to Flash and made masks so that the images would sort of "animate into existence", as it were. After that, popped it into After Effects to get a nice soft colour change, then into Premier Pro for some music. Exporting it was a little shifty, but it looks like it came out alright in the end.

I think I didn't do too bad for a refresher course. Of course, "not too bad" isn't nearly up to my preference. If given the chance, I tend to go all-out just to show that I can. I expect to start upping the ante as the quarter progresses, but we'll see what time allows!

(One example, on my other youtube page)

Why crows, and what is Senet?

A fond hello to all new readers to this almost-equally new blog. I'm your host and blog writer, Sam Morstan.

I'm working on my degree in Digital Design, and ever nearing the possibility that I may be working soon in the field of Digital Design, and hopefully someday in concept art, writing, or other artistic development for videogames or movies. I'm a jack-of-all-trades looking for new trades.

So why Crows? I love crows and ravens. Not because of all things goth or a keen interest in Poe, but because crows are absurdly smart. My Alma Mater, the University of Washington (Seattle) does studies on crows, which I would highly suggest looking into if at all interested. Crows remember faces, gossip, visit family, hold rudimentary courts, help each-other with complex tasks, and much more! They can also hold grudges, so be nice to the crows. Feed them, greet them politely as you pass, and walk slowly by them. You never know when you need a very smart feathered friend.

So what is Senet?

Senet is an ancient Egyptian board game, somewhat of a cross between Checkers and Mancala. Playing Senet is said to be representative of death, and that if one wins a game of Senet, they have protection from the major gods of the pantheon. (Or, so it says according to Wikipedia). Different people have proposed different rules to the game. I personally quite enjoy Senet, when rules can be agreed on, and a board with pieces can be found. I would very much like to add one to my collection.

The picture above is an unrelated photoshopped image, with pieces taken from all over the UK. A beach and a silvery spherical statue from Ireland, an Invisible Man figure from Scotland, a rocky cove and a dragon statue from England. It would take a while for me to track down the exact locations of any of those individual pieces. I took the pictures myself, and pieced them together for a Photoshop class last quarter.