Mixed Media

mixed media is when a combination of programs or methods are used to create an image. These images taken off of cghub.com are perfect examples of when combining different medias can create a stylized image with a lot of personality.

And The Mid-Quarter Crisis Rears Its Ugly Head Again...

So it seems to me that week five or six of every quarter starts with myself running into a wall at 100 miles an hour. Both emotionally and physically, I feel as if I have nothing left. The farther we get into our college career the more rigorous the criteria gets (obviously). While in past quarters we would have an easy first couple of weeks to acclimate ourselves to the DAAP quarter, this quarter hit the ground running. All cylinders have been firing since day one and last week those cylinders came to a crashing halt. This has happened to me one other time throughout my years in DAAP and I let the feeling consume the rest of the quarter, dragging my grades and myself to an all time low. However, we are here to learn and to grow; not just as designers but as people as well. I know that I have a task to do, and that task is to pick my head up and keep pushing on. When I signed up for DAAP I knew it was always going to be hard, and when the going gets tough it is only I who can decide what to do. I have learned from the past and while I know the going will be tough for a while, I am going to do whatever necessary to push through to the end, and finish strong.

Struggles With Illustrator & information design

The first challenge of this assignment was my complete lack of knowledge with the program Illustrator. I wasn't sure if I would be able to pull off renders that would do justice to the forms I was attempting to create. After many frustrating hours I started to understand the program well enough to create the renders you see above. The second difficulty came when trying to create a successful info-graphic that would support my designs in an understandable way. After many different attempts I believe I created one that accomplished its desired purpose.

Inspiring Entertainment designer

Ryan Church is a leading entertainment designer in the film and video game industry. His paintings and illustrations have found there way into numerous films including Star Wars episodes 2 and 3, Steven Speilberg's War of the Worlds, Dead Space, and James Cameron's Avatar. His incredible knowledge of color, composition, and atmosphere allows him to create some truly incredible paintings and inspire other artists to learn similar techniques and skills . Take a look at some of his work and see if you agree.

Info Graphics

Info Graphics are useful tools for a designer. They provide us with an interesting way to show gathered information, and more importantly; info graphics show why as designers we do what we do and why we make the decisions we make. An info graphic is a way in which useful information is shown in a visually interesting way. The examples below show how information can be made visually interesting.


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So what is it that makes these images interesting to us? There are a couple of reasons. The first is that these graphics are bold. They grab our attention from the beginning and encourage us to look deeper and read what the information is presenting. The second key to these images is their flow. Both images have an interesting amount of movement that carries the viewers eyes across the page in a way that makes sure all content is absorbed.

Portfolio Fall 2010

I just finished my new portfolio. Below is a link to the entire portfolio. Take a look and tell me what you think!







www.daapspace.daap.uc.edu/~moore2mj/MichaelMoore_fall2010_portfolio.pdf


Mikey here,

This Portfolio was an evolutionary process through and through. The obvious goal of a portfolio is to show what talents and services you can bring to a company or work place. I knew that I wanted to showcase my work in the most simplistic and clean way possible. No tricks or distractions, just the work itself. The final solution is reflection of this idea. Simplicity coinciding with good quality work will ultimately create a successful portfolio. Let me know if I succeeded.

-Mikey

Tron Legacy Trailer

Tron Legacy, The follow up to the original Tron from the 80's is finally on its way to theaters nearly 3 decades after the original released. The hype growing around this movie is huge and thanks in part to its number of great trailers released over the past year. The epic 3d adventure has used its trailers to bring back the fanboys while harnessing a whole new group of young movie-goers. The beginning of the trailer focuses on nostalgia to please the original Tron fans. They show a couple of characters from the original as well as some of the old Flynn arcade and computer lab. After this they waste no time getting into the meat of the film. The super shiny, sleek tech environments designed to grab and welcome new fans to the franchise. This new world is intriguing and vivid and spending a couple hours in it sounds like a lot of fun. This after all is the point of the trailer, to make people want to go spend two hours in this world that Disney and the filmmakers have created for us as viewers. Lastly, the trailer sends us out with a bang. Flynn jumps out of an aircraft only to see a light jet form around him as he blasts away. A good 'wow factor' to end the trailer and too keep the viewer thinking about the film long after the trailer ends.

A brand to learn from

Apple has been and will continue to be an iconic brand that we as designers can should learn from. Apple has two major things going for them: The design of their products, and the company owner Steve Jobs. The design for apple is iconic due to its simplicity. Smooth surfaces and clean materials have established apple ahead of the technology pack. The design team has mastered the art of finding beauty in simplicity. Steve Jobs is equally important to the success of Apple. Steve Jobs possesses a quality that we as professional designers can only hope to attain. Jobs has been and always will be known first as a great presenter and public speaker. His presentation skills are direct, precise, clean, practiced, consistent, and trimmed of all fat. In terms of presenting a product, Jobs is as close to perfect as one can get. This is why designers should pay attention to Apple. They handle two parts of their business incredibly well; Design, and presentation. They go hand in hand. One cannot survive without the other. Luckily for them however, both departments are ahead of the game.