I chose my can and label for my Photoshop piece because I believe that it demonstrates my ablility ot use photoshop in many different ways. I first started with a picture of a blank can. I used the pen tool to create a path. I then turned it into a clipping path so I could put it into Indesign without a background. After I had the can ready I made a square label in Illustrator. I also made the words, or title for my magazine layout, in Indesign. I placed both the square label and words into photoshop and postioned and sized them the way I wanted. I then made them into one layer and placed them into the same document as the can, just on a new layer. Once I had the can and the label in the same document I put the opacity of the label down so I could see the can through the label. Then I used the transformation warp tool and wraped the label to fit the curve of the can. I erased the extra edges, where the can becomes narrow at the top, and made sure the label fit to my liking. I put the opacity of the label back to 100% and then wanted to make the label look like it was printed onto the shiny can. I decided the best way to do this was by lightly erasing the label. I used the eraser at 25% flow and 25% opacity. This erased the label just enough to see the highlights and shadows of the can, but not enough so that the can's label looked fake. In the end I was happy with the way the can turned out, and didnt have to many problems making it. I think the hardest thing for me was first making the flate label. The pictures above show the steps that I went through to get to the final can.

I chose my car for my final portfolio for Illustrator because I believe that it demonstrates my ablity to use the different tools in Illustrator the best. I also spent so much time on it that I want to show it off as much as I possibly can! This work is from back in the first half of the semester and the assignment was to recreate our favorite ride in Illustrator using the different vecor tools. I chose to do a picutre of a 280z because my boyfriend has one and I love to ride in it. The picture I used was not of his car, and the car in the picture was originally silver, but as you can see I have changed the color to blue. I did this so it would be the same color as his car. I will explain how I did this below. I first started with the picture of the car and turned it into a template. When I started tracing the car I think I started on the windows and worked on the smaller details before doing the body and color change. I tried using many different tools and techniques. I mainly used the pen tool and created shapes and lines, but I also used the shape tool. I didnt have much luck with the mesh gradiant tool when I tried using it, so I did use it in my final print out. Instead I did most of it myself. One I got ready to do the body and color change I put a picture of my boyfriends car into Illustrator and chose mid-tone color from that picture. I made that color into a swatch so that I could always have the same base color. I was able to make the color darker, but when I wanted to do a highlight I had to come up with another way to get the color I wanted. I decided the best way to do that was by putting a white transparancy over the normal blue. I ended up liking the way that worked and used it throughout the rest of the car's parts. In the end this project probably took me between 20 and 40 hours, but Im exactly sure, I just remember being in the viscom room for hours and looking at the clock and thinking have I really spent that much time in here, or is it really that late, or just 5 more minutes and then an hour later just 5 more minutes. The cycle of just 5 more minutes never ended!

I chose my Marceline booklet as my best Indesign layout. I am using it because I believe that it demonstrates that I have proficiency in Indesign. I chose to make the cover fairly simple. I kept it white while the other three pages are a tint of yellow. On the front I used a reverse triangle for the writing, the Marceline, Missouri is the longest, then Walt, Disney's, and hometown, respectively. I added the mouse ears onto the rainbow above the castle because I thought it made the traditional logo more fun. I made some changes to this layout since my print out version of it. I turned the big mouse ears on the inside a lighter shade of yellow, they were grey before but that was making the inside look a little dull. I also made all of the text aline to the left, including the pull quote. I created a lot of space around the pull quote so people will see it and want to read what Walt said. I also straigtened out the map of Missouri and made it the same color as the background so it looks like it is a cut out of the ears. One the back page I didnt do a ton, but I did move the picture of Walt to the middle of the page and made him a half cut out instead of a complete cut out.

I chose my Disney booklet as my best creative concept. I think that it shows my ability to go from the thought process to developing thumbnails to creating work on the computer and finally changing the work on the computer to make the client, or Rusty happy. I first started the process of coming up with ideas. I thought of everything that made me think of Disney. I then worked with those ideas to come up with colored thumbnails. After that I decided, with some critiques from other people, which thumbnail to go with. I started designing on the computer and had a print out to turn in. Rusty had a few more suggestions for me to make the booklet better. So I went back to the computer and re-worked my booklet until it looked good. The things that I changed were minor, the color and sizing of things. By doing this process I have found it much easier to come up with creative thumbnails if I have a list of ideas and words in front of me to work with. And I also find that once I sit down and start working on it I become more creative and I am able to come up with multiple ideas to take into a final production. Above are the photos of the steps I took in making this booklet. There is no picture of my first print out because I did not have it to scan.

I decided to use my fishing magazine for my final portfolio best design submission because I think it really demonstrates my ability to figure out solutions to my design problems. When I first designed my magazine layout I was going for something simple. I chose to use just the picture of my can I made and colors from that can's label throughout my layout. After messing with it for a while I knew it was to simple and too monotone. The problem was I didn't know what color or colors to use. I spent almost an entire class period trying to decide what color, I tried yellows, blues, greens, reds, oranges, grays, tinted grays, and never liked any of them. Rusty was also trying to help me decide what color to choose, but I didn't like the ones he like and he didn't like the ones I liked. But then he suggested to choose a color from a picture, once that maybe I wasn't necessarily using in my layout. So I found a picture that had some dead grass in it, kind of a golden pale yellow color. I selected a sample from that photograph and tried it. I decided that it was the best color I had tried! Besides the color issue I had an issue with space. I had to much room behind the can and also to much room above the text on the right side page. I fixed these problems with pictures. I used a picture of clear water behind the can and made a cut out of a fish, possibly a bass but I don't know my fish very well. I put that fish above the text on the right side, overlapping with the color bar going across both pages. Throughout this layout I have created many different layers of depth. I have over lapped the picture behind the can and the color bar across the top of the page is in front of the picture of clear water. I also have the fish on top of the colored bar but behind text sub-header. I have also used a drop shadow on the sub-heading and the fishing techniques to create some depth. I have created unity throughout the two pages by using the same colors and having the color bar run across the top of both pages. These things also create different grounds, foreground and background. The proportioning of the can compared to the page, about 2/3, gives it a hierarchy and draws the eye to it. There is a grid system on both of the pages, the first page is an eight columns and the second page is nine columns. The theme that I tried to use for this layout was fishing for men. I have the emphasis or focal point of the layout being the can, with the title of the article in it. I have also created a contrast in color, the photo and the can are blues and the color blocks and fish are golden yellow.

This is my best example of copyfitting. This is my best example of copy fitting because it is the closest to my final art production. I actually went and copyfitted this a second time, after I re-worked the paragraphs. I did this before I re-worked the magazine layout, so it is still not exactly like the final art production. I also had to work with the letting and tracking throughout the copy to make sure I had no single words by them selves. After doing copyfitting a few times I feel that I have gotten much faster and more accurate at it. However, it seems that everytime I go from the thumbnails witht the copyfitting to the final or computer art I find that I forgot to copyfit something, whether its a head line or a pull quote or small paragraph. So this time when I went to recopyfit the article I made sure that I got everything. I had also reworked the copy to make less paragraphs and to have the copy make more sence when being read in the magazine. The problem with this copyfitting is that it doesn't wrap around the can as it does in the final art production. The reason it doesnt is that I wasn't originally going to have the text wrap around the can. I was just going to have the two columns below the can. When I didnt that I felt that the can was to small, so I enlarged it and then had to do something with the copy. I aslo decided I wanted to have a drop letter as the first letter in the copy to help tie in the pages with color. I didnt do this in the copyfitting because once again I wasnt planning on doing it orginally.

I first started off making a label for and aluminum can that I was going to use as my main image in the layout. I used illustrator to trace a silhouette of a fisherman. I made the words for the label in indesign. I then placed both the fisherman and the words into photoshop to create a flat label. After making my final flat label I took a picture of an alumninum can and wraped the flat label around. The way I did this was by using the transformation tool and warping the flat label to fit the rounded can. Once I had the label onto the can I used the eraser at 25% flow and opacity. By doing this the shine of the can was able to come through and made the wraping of the label more realistic. After finishing the can I moved into indesign and started working on my layout for the two page spread. I keeped the layout simple and put the can on the middle of the page with the first two columns of text wraping around the can. The second page has three columns of text with a box that contains fishing techniques that highlights what the text is about. I decided I wanted this box so that if someone looking at the article and just glance over and see what the techniques are and then if they want can read the whole article. I used one color of blue and just changed the values of it throughout the spread. I had a slight problem with the text wraping around the can, but fixed that by having two cans. I put one on the page and possisioned it so the text was where I wanted it and then took the opacity down to 0. I then put the second can on the master page and took the text wrap off of it and positioned it so that the drop shadow did not overlap the text. When I put the can on the master page the blue color strip in the background would be ontop of the can so I aslo put that onto the master page. Then everything was where I waned it and it was time to print.

When I went to print I decided that since the size of one page was 8 by 10 I could use the lazerjet printer. I printed out the pages on spearate pages and realized that they had been printed to fit page. I went in and changed the properties to it would print to actual size and printed it again. The size was just enough to see the crop marks so I could still crop the pages to the correct size. The only other problem I had was that for some reason when the pages printed anywhere I had a text box ontop of color the box showed up as being just slighly darker. I'm not sure why this happened because it didn't show up on the pdf file.

The first picture is the outside cover and back side, and the second picture is the two inside pages. I also wanted to write about my process from the computer to printing. I didnt have any problems other than that I was worried about printing not being done in time due to my sickness, but lucky me it was done and I was able to glue it together and turn it in on time. The gluing and cutting process went almost perfectly. The only thing I had problems with was the cutting and the fact that the crop marks were only on the outer edges of the booklet, so when I went to cut I would cut off the crop marks for the other sides, my solution was to use a pencil and make the crop marks a little longer. However in class today Rusty told us that we dont cut all the way across, only cut slightly past the crop mark so that you can still see the other crop marks. In the end you just cut out the center like you would when your cutting a mat. I was also worried about my fold line lining up because it was two different colors, but when I went to fold it it worked out perfectly!

As I was getting ready to design my thumbnails I started to make a list of what I think of when I hear the word Disney. I made a list of the different ideas I thought of. They included some of the following, Mickey and Mini Mouse, When you wish upon a star, An adventure of you lifetime, Where dreams come true, and many more. I also wrote down all of the specs and the extra things that were to be included. I drew out some different layout ideas and ways to fold the paper. Then I started on my pencil sketches. I probably worked on those for a few hours before going through and choosing my top five fronts and top five backs. I then came up with the size of the thumbnail, I decided to do a fourth of the full size (2.125 x 3.5 inches). Once I started drawing my better thumbnails I decided on the colors to use. I also did some research on the internet of pictures and graphic, and came up with some grid layouts.

This marker comp was a real challenge for me because it seemed like everything went wrong. First I had problems with the bottom wording, the first time I did it it was off center and just looked horrible. I decided to make a new bottom and cut out the old one and glued in the new one. I also had problems with my car. It looks almost nothing like the car. I tried to show the highlights and lighten the windows but it all turned out dark. Thinking back on it I could have used colored pencil to fix the color problems, but I didn't want to sharpen my pencils, and my sharpener was in OP. The other major problem that I had was Rusty decided to change this comp mounting from the chili poster mounting. I thought the mount was going to be on white with a flush mount. I wanted to make sure before I glued and cut the comp out. As to my surprise the blog said to mount on black with a one inch border. Normally this wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that I had used all of my black foam core on the final printout of the chili poster. I decided that there had to be a way, without me having to run to Wal-mart at 10 pm, I could make the white illustration board black. First I tried to color it black with marker, when that didn't work I was thinking of paint and some other ways to do it. Then I remembered Gary showing us that you can ripe the backing off of foam core with out ruining the foam or the other side. So I got out my original car printout from earlier in the semester and ripped the back off of it. I then spray mounted the black back of the foam core onto the white illustration board and all my problems were fixed! I guess I learned to make sure you always have both black and white matting materials on hand and that Rusty likes to change the details to make sure people are paying attention. 

After doing this whole process I wish I could have done a different layout. I like the simplicity of this design, but there were some other layouts that I think would have been more interesting, and possible more challenging for me to create. This poster was very easy to create on the computer.