So, we're done?

Oh the joy TGJ 201 has brought this year. No, really, I enjoyed this course! All the tasks we embarked on this year were interesting and new to me. Each unit had required much thought, application of skill, test of ability, and a creative element that we could let shine through. As I stroll down memory lane, I take the opportunity to think about trials, errors, strong component and the though process behind them.

Multiple Exposures

We started off easily with our multiple exposures. So I was a little apprehensive at first about taking on this project because I simply could not think of a cohesive idea. This was the difficult part of the assignment. I've learned to crop with precision using a variety of tools available on Photoshop. Many will agree when I say, bless the Magic Lasso tool. Add in a few masks and it was easier than I thought! Eventually I pasted together a "masterpiece" involving multiple pictures of myself as if I had split personality. Lurking in the corner was an eccentrick quirky Sonya, a vain Sonya looking in the mirror with her fashion magazines, a version of myself "arting out" with a camera while another social Sonya poses for the picture. A struggle I had with this was getting the images to blend and fit well together. The lighting in my room changed through the shoot and some versions of myself just wouldn't blend it. I tried adjusting the overall colour levels and saturation which helped with this.

The Circus

For this assignment I created a circus with me being at the centre as a ring leader. I used a cornucopia of personal pictures to create a collage with a variety of colours. Many of these images were cropped, re sized, re-coloured, and edited using Photoshop. I tried to encompass large parts of my life into this collage such as my family, friends, and favourite things. It took about 6 hours to complete this piece and to make sure each image perfectly fit together. I feel the strongest component of this work is the relevancy of the images used, and the way in which they were edited to become cohesive. It was difficult to create a collage of the circus that surrounds me while maintaining the circus theme, so I tried adding a circus tent background to help with this. Overall I found the project to not only be relatively easy, but I had a lot of fun copy and pasting the Comm Tech way. (NOTE: When saving as a .jpeg the image turned blue as it was originally done in CMYK for print use)

The Pattern

At the suggestion of others, I used three objects in combination to create my patter. Though hard to tell I used a telephone receiver, lip gloss, and a red pump to create my final pattern. I vectored these objects till perfection using Illustrator's pen, zoom, fill, and eye dropper tools (primarily). This was an extensive project due to complications with saving. The file was often to large to save it onto my desktop with these computers, but after several trials I finally finished. I was both surprised and proud of the outcome. I didn't think I would be able to create a pattern out of my vectored images. It was hard to imagine how those items would come together, and after a couple attempts, and much cropping and rotating, I created my pattern. The strongest component was the way I arranged the thumbnail image to be pleasing to the eye and not straining.


The Eccentrick Inspiration

For my eccentrick inspiration, I channeled the multi-talented David Macklovitch. Using my pattern as a background fill layer, I vectorized all the highlights in white to create my final image. Due to complications I had to do the whole project twice. In the second time I made the error of not getting the pattern to tessellate perfectly. Overall I am still happy with the result. The strongest component is the minuscule details I made sure to vectorise. David Macklovitch has reached a level I aspire to be. Not only is he an accomplished musician, but he also expanded his works to running a business, producing, remixing, and getting a PhD in French literature. The photograph originally used was eccentrick, and I feel I did his personality justice.
Weccentrick Video

This had to be the funnest project to date. Working with my zealous partner Samantha, we went back to our childhood roots and created PLAY! This original video echoed our eccentrick attributes in a fun and playful manner that everyone can relate to. We had a lot of fun with our 5 hours of filming in different locations, and 6 hours of editing the videos. We put forth a lot of effort to finish our video in time for the art show as we were really keen and showing it to the world (or at least the Mary Ward community). We strived to shoot and experimented with angles and different types of shots. Much planning was also involved before we set up our tripod to shoot. I feel a strong component of our video is the cohesiveness and variety we provided. We stuck to our child like aesthetic and used a variety of firming shots to provide contrast and an int resting display. We did have errors along the way, but we went back to fix them as soon as we saw it needed it. We worked well together and hope you enjoyed PLAY!, and our personalities shawn through.

(NOTE: Cover done in CMYK)