How is school going? AWESOME

Everyone has been asking me lately how everything is going at school, so I thought I'd do a little update on what I've been working on for my various classes and how I've been doing. Basically in each of my 6 classes, we've had small assignments and bigger mid-term assignments or tests. Starting next week, we're alreay moving onto our final projects and we ave final exams in the last week of the semester. There are 15 weeks per semester (3 semesters in all) and we're already in week 10.

Basic Design I:
This is my Illustrator course. Illustrator is used to draw things ont he computer and is widely used for logos. We had a small midterm that involved following the steps and drawing small pictures like the fish I put up in an older post (I did VERY well on it).
I also had a second test where I had to trace logos in a fast and efficient way. I managed to barely finish in time and found it to be one of the more difficult things I've had to do this semester although I'm hoping I did well enough (marks are yet to be handed back).
Right now I'm almost finishing up my midterm project which is compositions. the project consists of taking a logo and then repeating it in a certain fashion. We have to do this with 5 concrete shapes that we trace and 5 abstract that we make up. I promise to put up all of them one I"m finished but for now here is an example of what I'm going ot hand in:

Starting with this image I traced over



I then did a composition known as Gradation In Size where, basically, the worm is getting smaller as you move outward from the top left corner.



Not too sure on all the details on our final project be we were told to bring in a photo of somethign we want to draw. I'm debating over a comic book character and maybe my favorite movie, The Blues Brothers!

Image Processing:
This is my Photoshop course. it's where I'm learning the software used to manipulate photographic images. It's the one used to take your head and put it on a body of a hot model...

I've had 3 small projects which involved adding color to an image and fixing up various images (One of them being the Duotone stuff I put up a while back).

Our midterm project involved making an animation by drawing out our cartoon in Illustrator, adding color with Photoshop and then making it move with another program called Image ready.

I had many ideas but ended up using this one:



It's supposed to move but I'm not sure how to get it to work off this website (try clicking on it or downloading it). Just imagine the head is bobbing up and down and the arms are playing the guitar while the speakers are booming.

I don't have much info on our final project for this class btu we were told to bring a book on a subject we like and will have to make a book cover or something for that subject using pictures form the book.

Creativity:
Probably the most interesting and fun class I am taking, we basically ahve been asked to create all kinds of things and use our head in different ways. We had a midterm project that was my poster that I painted a picture of a King Neptune character in front of his under sea castle. I'll try and get picture of that to put up. I spent a lot of time painting it and ended up with a 19/20 for my effort, original ideas and presentation (we had to show off our poster and talk about it for a few minutes. Luckily I had 4 years of chem presentation experience...)

We have a midterm exam that involves doing a brainstorm session with the class. Basically, the more ideas I have to give to the pot, the more marks I'll get.

Graphic Design:
This class is a non-computer class where I have to draw all layouts by hand. We had a huge midterm project that involved making 16 layouts using cut up magazine pieces. I spent a shitload of time making it (takes forever to cut up magazines and paste them!) but it was worth it - I got 19/20.

Our next assigment is to collect pictures of our assigned color (mine was orange) and we're going to have to make some sort of label.

Edition 1:
This is my Quark Xpress course. It is the program that allows us to do layouts but on the computer instead of by hand.

Our first project was making reproducing a layout my prof created, step by step only using Quark Xpress:



The second project we had to do was make another layout, for a phonecard poster, but this time using all of the 3 essential programs (photoshop, illustrator and quark xpress) with less guidelines to follow and doing most of it by eye. I had to hand it in today but here is what it looks like:



Our final project will involve us making our OWN poster competely from scratch. I have ot come up with concept drawings, a drawing of how I want it to look, find all the pictures and put it all together. We have 5 weeks to do it with a different stage being need to be completed by a specific week. Can't wait to get started on that one.

Computer Techniques:
Probably the least exciting course, but fun non-the-less due to the really cool prof we have. It's a course to learn all the shortcuts on Mac OS-X and have to be fast and effecient on the computer.

We had a few little things to do including a small quiz on the shortcuts (which I aced).

Today we had our midterm. He kept scaring us, telling us it is a test where he will sit with us individually and tell us to do certain things on the computer. He will be checking to see how fas and efficient we are on the computer. He kept telling us that it would be hard to fail but also hard to do really well.

In accordance to him telling us that we should treat it like an interview, I came dressed in a tie (but forgot my buttoned shirt so I went a-la-Avril Lavigne). I was really worried about not doing well, so I volonteered to go first and get it over with. I knew how to do everything he wanted me to do and he helped a bit on the way which I thought meant I'd lose marks. In the end he tallied them all up and showed me my results: 19/20! he told me he was really suprised how fast I was at doing everything in my first semester!

Well I really hope I can keep up this trend. Stay tuned for me to add pictures and comments on more thigns I'm working on in the near future.