Now that DIE is all said and done with where do we go from here with this wonderful collection of text based thoughts and such? As much as I dislike having to write everything out in this thing I must admit the text based blog format has is virtues. For instance I will continue to use it as as a dumping ground for whatever work I’m doing at school. But do note that updates will be very few and far between.

That is because my main focus will be on the vlog project I’m picking away at over on Youtube now that school is pretty much finished for the summer you can anticipate regular weekly updates! Also I will have to start fulfilling the various promises of punishment vids for missing various weeks over the last semester. Right now the top vote is for getting legs waxed… wooo, I can’t wait. My flatmate is giddy with excitement whenever the topic is brought up.

Anyways the vlog will continue to be my primary means of communication and personal expression on the Internets. Why? Because new media is the happening thing right now and I want to be a part of this awesome constantly growing community of Youtubers who keep on pushing the boundaries of what new media can do, not to mention the positive change it’s helping to bring about. I’d go into more detail but my time is limited and I need to split.

For those who are interested below is the latest installment in the onlifefantastic series.

Final project of the semester!

“We are all trying to tell our story, our cosmology, our way of understanding the world, through our work.” ~ Mark Dion

Stole that quote from the assignment handout. I thought it was rather fitting though especially for what I chose to do for this final project.

So here we are finally at the end. The Premise for our final DIE assignment was to combine and use all the skills we have learned over this semester in photoshop and illustrator to create a small booklet to be publish at the Digital Output Center at ECU. The Booklet had to have a minimum of 12 pages plus a cover and we could make the content of the booklet whatever we wanted it to be.

Faced with endless possibilities I decided on something rather simple, my epic back packing tour across Europe from back in 2008. This was mainly because I had over 13,000 digital photos from that trip that I had yet to do anything with so why not take some of the best and turn it into a little booklet for class? The first week into the project however I was faced with doubts when I saw some of the other more creative subjects my peers had decided to do. As a last minute decision I was going to switch over to doing a booklet on historical fencing (another passion of mine) but decided against it on the advice of my instructor.

So I stuck with my original idea and came up with a simple design that focused on the layout and arrangement of some of my best photos from that trip. I titled the booklet “Europe in 16 Weeks” with each page documenting a different week on my trip in chronological order. Taking my instructors advice regarding text and needless graphics I decided to let the photos stand on there own with the only text being on the tittle page and a little “End” credit. By having no text that indicates where or when the image was taken I feel that viewing the booklet becomes a game of sorts where you have to figure out and guess at where each picture was taken. One of my peers described it as a mini adventure of sorts as you flip around and try to figure out where you are.

Overall it was rather neat to revisit all those photos I took back in Europe and pick out the best ones from each week. It’s been two years since that trip and now I finally have something I can show people when they come round to visit.

The finished booklet can be viewed in pdf form by clicking on the link below.

Europe in 16 Weeks

Map of Europe that I "live traced" in illustrator, re-coloured, and cropped.

To create the cover I took the image of a map of Europe to the left here and live traced it in adobe illustrator. Once traced I experimented with different colour pallets till I found one I like for the front of the cover. For the back I inverted the colours and flipped it to be a mirror image. I used the same image in gray scale to do the inside of the cover mirroring it on both sides.

Aside from that the bulk of the work was simply trying to figure out the best way to arrange the photos on each page into a decent layout that was interesting, but not to complicated to follow.

A lot of the images had to be significantly cropped to fit in the layout, so I’ve included a number of them below for you to browse at your lesure. They are not in chronological order.

Overall this was a fun project to work on that wasn’t as mind numbingly time consuming as the rest of been. It’s also nice to finally have something physical that documents my trip from that wonderful summer abroad.

*All photographs Are copyright to D. Devlin 

My "Adopt A Dog Campaign" poster as it would be seen posted up in a Vancouver bus shelter.

The premise for this project was to use adobe illustrator to create a logo and a poster “to communicate an issue local to Vancouver that you feel strongly about.” Our audience for the poster was our peers and the goal was to create a poster that would “inspire them to take positive action for change.”

Taking influences from the vintage posters I posted earlier I tried to recreate the tone and feeling I get from vintage posters. The poster had to be made up of vector images so I could not recreate that classical hand drawn feel so instead I focused on trying to create a bold design with striking colours.

The issue I chose to communicate was the need to adopt dogs from the local SPCA shelters in BC and Vancouver which are always overcrowded with hundreds of dogs in need of good homes.

Though the project was initially frustrating because I was totally unfamiliar with how to use abobe illustrator, once I figured out the basics of the program, things smoothed out and I actually started to really enjoyed experimenting with the “live trace” tool and coming up with the final poster concept.

Below are four images I “traced” and manipulated in illustrator to create vector images that I incorporated into the logo and poster.

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Above are the two original logo concepts I came up with. The paw thumbs up was a “Approved by Animals Everywhere” logo and the AADC logo was for a mock “Adopt A Dog Campaign” that I made up for the purposes of this assignment.

Below is the original poster concept that I cam up with. Honestly is rather embarrassing posting it here because it’s soooooo bad. I don’t know what I was thinking when I came up with this original concept. I was trying to create a bold slogan but only ended up leaving a rather confusing message for the viewer that offered little to no information and did nothing to inspire the viewer.

Crappy original poster concept.

After getting several suggestions and critiques from my instructor and peers I reworked the “Approved By Animals Everywhere” to be more refined and completely redid the poster layout drawing more upon the vintage poster designs for inspiration. I was pretty satisfied with the AADC logo and only changed the colours on the paw to make it stand out more from the letters.

Removing the cat I enlarged the dogs to make them the main focus of the poster and added more detail to the bottom bull dog that didn’t take to the “live trace” very well. I also enlarged the vertical lines and rotated them to align with the angle the dogs are jumping at to create a feeling of motion that carries the eye through the poster and makes the leaping dogs more dynamic.  I then went about about adding more informative text that helps explain the issue more clearly to the viewer and provide them with inspiration and means to take action by providing the website.

Below we have the redesigned thumbs up paw logo and the final poster design. Overall I spent approximately 13 -15 hours on this project.

Much, much better than the original yes?

I find this logo design much more effective than the original. The colours match the posters palette and tie it in nicely while also helping to better define the image of a paw giving you the thumbs up.

The next major project of this semester was the poster project. When this project was initially introduced, vintage posters immediately came to mind as an influence. I’ve always loved old historical things in general, vintage posters especially though mainly for their iconic art, and bold designs.

Below are a number of vintage posters that I enjoy for various reasons that influenced the design and layout of my own poster. Some are rather famous and/or popular vintage posters such as the Absinth and Chat Noir, the others are just ones I found particularly intriguing during various google searches.

Behold the fist project of the semester, Utopia/Dystopia panorama project!

The premise for this project was that we had to go out and take a panorama photograph and explore the concept of Utopia or Dystopia through the manipulation of the photograph adding a subject into the foreground. When we were giving this assignment I was originally thinking of doing a Dystopic scene because it was rather dreary and rainy in Vancouver. When I went to take the photos however the weather turned more pleasant and I was inspired to explore a more Utopic scene.

With our pixals combined we are... panorama!

Above is the original panorama image I put together from 8 separate photographs using the automated stitching program in adobe photoshop CS4. Such an awesome tool! I chose this marina near Granville Island because I feel it exemplifies the quintessential Vancouver urban-scape. The complex mix of ships, bridges, and towers I feel has a futuristic, almost cyberpunk, feel to it and was the perfect canvas for me to explore these concepts of future Utopian, Dystopian futures for Vancouver.

The five images of boats to the left are the subjects I chose to integrate into the image.

Each boat was painstakingly cut out from it’s original image. I then carefully edited out the physical supports that held up each boat to give the illusion that four of the five boats are floating. Great care was taken to match the reflections of light and colour on the hull of each boat to make it look as real as possible.

On average I spent about four to five hours working on each each boat making sure every detail was included in the cut out and hiding the supports as best I can. The boat with the mast and green stair beside it took five hours alone to cut out because I included each hairline rope and cord that was strung up on that mast. Unfortunately the detail is impossible to see against a white back ground. Thankfully the details are more visible in the final image.

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Putting together the final image took approximately eight or nine hours to complete. Above is an in progress snap shot. Here I’ve only just started adding the boats in after editing the panorama photo. I cropped the photo in to get rid of the uneven edges, removed several dust spots and corrected several places in the image where the stitching didn’t quite match up. The most notable being various places on the bridge, and the railings and parking lot lines in the foreground.

Below we have the final image. After adding in various boats I added a couple shadows under the boats close to the ground to make them look more natural and darkened the bottoms of some of the more prominent boats in the air to give them less of a flat look. Finally I upped the contrast in the image to make the colours more vibrant. Overall I spent around 26+ hours working on this image.

Despite the ridiculous number of hours I spent on this image I feel I could have done more to explore the Idea of Utopia within this image. If I had more time I would have tried adding in more monolithic looking structures in the distant background to give the image a more futuristic metropolis look. I would have also liked to find more boats with sails and various other boat like vehicles to give the image more variety and adding to the realism of the image.

You can interpret the various boat formations as you like. I’ve been told by a few people that the three black boats in the top right surrounded by the small flotilla of little boats gives the impression of an invading force of some sort. Perhaps it is, perhaps its a fleet of visiting dignitaries from a foreign land. It’s open to interpretation.

Overall I really enjoyed working on this project and would like to continue exploring this idea of Utopia versus Dystopia in the future.

*sigh* As of late the awesome of life has been rather lacking, well the awesome of school life anyways. The two week break for the olympics and reading week totally screwed me over as far as being in a proper mind set to focus on school goes. My brain has been in holiday mode ever since which is no excuse of course.

We’re in University now. Work is supposed to be done and handed in on time no questions asked. We’re supposed to be professional and creative and pushing the borders of our creative minds and energies… in reality however this tends to fall apart when things like rent, work, loans, bills, groceries, dishes, family, relationships, and pretty much the day to day life of a student comes into play.

But thats still no excuse, there are people out there in some pretty f*#ked up situations way, waaaaaaaaay worse then mine comparatively.
Besides ones life is only as awesome as one is willing to make it so I should just stop with the lazy burned out art student attitude I’ve got going on here and get this crap done already…

Then again I’ve been up all night dicking around on the internet and that bed looks pretty comfortable and I’ve got class in less than 6 hrs so I might as well catch some Z’s so I can partially function in class…
*sigh*

And so we try again. I struggle to document and share my process with you the world and my peers. Let us try and bring things up to speed before morning.

I seem to be having difficulties with this whole blog thing. I start it up, I’m all excited, I have great ideas and then I fall of the face of the earth and don’t touch the thing for weeks on end looking like a complete tool in the process. The same thing happened with the original video blog I started up for creative process. After creating the thing and pronouncing my intentions I went on a four week hiatus, and still occasionally miss the odd week to the ire of the handful of subscribers I’ve managed to attract.

The problem, I find, tends to be that I don’t want to post anything unless I feel it’s relevant, witty, entertaining or insightful to some degree. As far as my mental capacities go it’s rather hard to try and be any of those things on a regular basis and thus the blog is left blank and untouched. This blog however is not for my own personal enjoyment or expression, this is for class.  By neglecting this blog I am unfortunately neglecting my class.

As humans we are creatures of habit. If one has not made a habit of something it is rather difficult to suddenly try and insert seemingly unnatural habits into ones normal routine. Habit’s like trying to maintain a regular blog, video or text, for an extended period of time for example.

But there’s nothing like the threat of lost easy marks to ignight the creative spark within. So on with the blog we march.

In accordance with the requirements of my DIE (digital imaging essentials) course, you see before you a traditional web blog. This is actually rather exciting for me because as some of you may already  know I created a video blog on youtube last semester for my final Creative Process assignment. I have yet to really do anything with that vlog due to holidays and lack of access to a machine with video editing software, which, yes, is incredibly lame, but that will all be rectified in due time!

It is my hope that this blog before you will work in conjunction with the vlog to act as a means of expression, exploration, and documentation over the next four years (3 1/2 now) of my academic career and evolution as an artist; that it shall bear witness to the creative process behind the work and the little side trips of life along the way.

I invite you to join me on this journey of life, art, and everything fantastic in between and may it lead us to profound and thoughtful places that enhance our appreciation for this brief existence of ours.

But we can’t forget to have a little fun along the way either, because serious sober thinking all the time could very well lead to anxiety, stress, depression and pickles up our butts so lets agree to be a little weird, yes?

After all life was meant to be awesome so lets carpe that diem and get this show on the road!