Coming in I didn’t know what to expect of this class, but I did enjoy it. I liked that there were multiple professors from the department so we always had different perspectives and we were able to get a lot of information. The most important thing That I gained from this class was a reassurance that I can make it. I remember when I started telling my friends and family what my major would be and getting criticized for choosing something that wouldn’t pay off or would take too long to get out into the field, but this class reassured me that there are plenty of opportunities just take them, seek them out, ask questions, and I will be okay and be in a field that makes me happy. There are plenty of small ways to break into the business and it doesn’t just go uphill from there, I will be jumping around in the “ladder” but I will won’t be behind a desk doing some boring paperwork.
Overall it was a good class, but it wasn’t my favorite and I am thankful the the glance into the “real” world that I got. I thought having speakers in was fun, moreso the alumni and guests because the professors a lot of knew about them and they told us about them in their classes. At the beginning of the class I didn’t like the time management tasks and all of that, I don’t think it genuinely helped, not all high schools but some do the same thing and I just happened to take the course to prepare for college and it was much better and when it came to tracking our time, most of us just tracked it and didn’t change anything, we viewed it as a task to write down things we did and then write about what we found, instead of coming to a realization that we may not spend enough time sleeping, or studying. I liked that it was on Mondays, I know shocker, but it was a nice relaxing class to have in the afternoon. I am definitely grateful for the knowledge and the peak into the business side of the world that it gave.
VISU 1100
Blog Post 10
This week in class we had three members, including the CEO, of Spacetime studios. I am not a gamer, not even close, I have a total of maybe two games on my phone and don’t own a gaming system anymore, and when I did, it was hardly every used. Even though I am not into games I did enjoy this presentation, it was thoughtful and informative, and entertaining. I enjoyed hearing about all of the different roles that are needed to develop a video game and mobile game. I knew a lot of hard work went into it but no clue there were so many specific roles that didn’t overlap as often as I thought they would. I also thought animators would be a bigger deal than how they were explained, they were important yes, but there weren’t many on staff, it was also one of the jobs that could overlap. The CEO said something about virtual reality when a question was asked, I wonder how that will impact the gaming community. Games will definitely be bigger than ever, but will it affect they way they are produced, or change who is doing what when creating the game, or will a studio have to hire new people to deal with the virtual reality aspects.
Hearing more in detail what it takes to create a game, makes me appreciate them more, and the way they look, I don’t think it will make me play them anymore than I do, but I know if definitely something I will be talking about more to the people around me who want to go into that industry. The jobs that help people work their way up in a studio surprised me, I don’t find them to be my cup of tea, but knowing that things seemingly so simple, but crucial to a game are what the “newcomers” are doing. Those jobs find flaws in a game, and get customer feedback and things like that, and those are important to the success or failure of a game on any device.
Questions for next week: What made you want to become a professor rather than just continue doing what you were doing before? Did you ever get frustrated enough to consider changing what you do for a living?
Blog Post 9- Presentation & Internships
I enjoyed this weeks presentation. I feel like it was relaxed and fun, we hadn’t just looked at photos and talked about them, and he isn’t a typical photographer either, which is what was so nice about seeing his career and his experiences. One thing I took away and wrote in my notes several times was a phrase he kept repeating and it was that if you don’t ask you will never know, he would not have gotten so many of his photos if he hadn’t just asked during down time or something.
Austin Film Festival- Marketing & Communications
http://www.fastweb.com/career-planning/internships/68521-conference-internship
I come across Austin Film Festival internships, somewhat frequently and one I am truly interested in is labeled as the Conference Internship. This isn’t a design intership, but it is one that would make a person do a little bit of everything, and very people orientated and I know that we can all use practice when it comes to out people skills when going into any career and this would be very helpful with that and adds marketing experience which is what I would like to minor in.
Texas State Aquarium- Graphic Design
http://careers.texasstateaquarium.org/careers/Careers.aspx?adata=EI7cSVq36ZNvIt16BoMU6LinpcSdI1kUSxR8fGZ7D%2bcP%2flIwdpkM6drgl0qPqDJmDwMRdqexUNLRzFumyKnIlW%2fS9JvOSIFmOXX27yVNIXX6QQOKC2ml5lig6OVyQ7%2bG0ezHcmo16JLo%2bFgDWa4HYQgPIofBcP7S6OvzvmSCeejwJ2gLS2KRZRQM%2fPfFI%2fPcW9pkImnb8dbC2OU7JrIOXTbAkXFOxoLuZJA66o%2fMAfWk
San Marcos is near where I grew up, and only an hour away and this would be a great opportunity for a designer to get hands on experience, and to an aquarium that is frequently visited by locals, university students and staff and more.
Lennox- Graphic Design Spring 2017
http://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=22b32855d5d3fe56&qd=RBZuPfoFxIcXlVcIhIcmZeHWIdGlGFpDEReZYM-QZb16DLFvLBX-2MnmLuouOJPSvJ10nLaoprf1E82Lnh3clXNuDPLoqzfOsFiE3M9gaqWQhwggWUZEvHtN5OcDtAPb&atk=1b0u9m28a5uvn82j&jsa=3156&inchal=apiresults&utm_source=publisher&utm_medium=organic_listings&utm_campaign=affiliate
Another great design opportunity working for a well known company(Lennox)
Blog Post 8
My future is not strictly planned out. At the beginning of high school I did have what I thought was a good plan, but it has changed over and over again, but I have also changed. There was a point right after my junior year where I just wasn’t sure of anything and left knowing I would be Editor in Chief of my high school yearbook staff, but I was quiet and wasn’t sure how my staff was going to like me, so I just let it all go. I take a trip almost every year with my grandparents and we were off to Montmartre in Paris for two weeks. I spent a lot of that time alone getting comfortable in my own skin and who I was. I actually got separated from my grandparents on the train and got myself 45 minutes out of town to the Palace of Versailles on my own. I appreciated getting lost while there and I have embraced something that isn’t planned out, because when it comes to your future and what you’re doing, the whole process is not going to go exactly the way you want it to. I was home for all of six hours before I went to a workshop and began working of the yearbook. I left confidently, and comfortable and I could not be more thankful for those two weeks, I would not have had the senior year I did and be here if I didn’t have that time.
I know what I want to do, but I don’t have a set path on how I want to achieve getting there. I believe that I will get there but I don’t need to have step for step process saying this is where I MUST intern, this is where my first official job in the business has to be, sometimes you have to take what comes to you or what step is better for yourself.
Traveling is one of my passions I just adore it. I have always wanted to travel to Australia and New Zealand, they are definitely tied for number one on where I would like to travel to. Australia is deemed the most dangerous place on the planet and it is stunning and offers so much diversity in people and nature, you have the Outback then the Gold Coast and stunning waterfalls. As for New Zealand, I feel like it is really underrated. It’s just out there by itself, but it is stunning. It has kept a lot of its culture throughout the years but also modernized with larger cities like we would see everyday. Just the older local culture I would love to experience and I want to be able to stargaze while I am there the sky is so beautiful.
I would love to see a workshop on water marbling paper. I recently learned how to marble paper using a foam shaving cream and food coloring, and I just love how it makes paper look and being able to write or draw on top of it. Water marbling has also fascinated me, but it is something I have yet to explore on my own.
Blog Post 7: Alumni Presentations
I definitely enjoyed the first alumni speaker more than the second due to technological difficulties, but I after finding out what the other speaker does and what he is doing, I did relate to the first speaker more. She reminded me of the passion I had while working on my BPA graphic design promotion project my senior year of high school. I did it all, it was something I was constantly thinking about and working on and getting feedback for because I didn’t wan’t it to look good just to make me look good I wanted it to look good because I loved what I was doing, and I wanted to show it off and if you can be proud of your work, talking about it and pitching the ideas behind it comes easily.
She knew she was a designer, and she knew she needed a job and much like Oen in my mind, she proved that we shouldn’t be picky about what jobs we get. We may not always want to stay there for the rest of our lives, but they are the needed stepping stones and in her case a great one, she loves what she is doing and it is leading her down a positive path and teaching her new things like marketing. She wasn’t 100% this is where I want to start working, but she knew she couldn’t just wait for another opportunity, she needed to start now.
I wouldn’t say the best piece of advice was something directly stated, but it is that if you are in a place that you aren’t comfortable doing or sharing with the public due to something going on in your personal life, you don’t have to share it. You are the priority. In her case she pulled her box offline for now and is makes sense and I feel like not many people would share that logic when having to make that decision. It allowed her to focus on where she is at though too. She has been able to start making her name, and getting well known at the office and the circle of startups and more. We cannot be afraid, we must do and do without any neglect to our passions because if we neglect it it will show in our work. If you work for a start up don’t go “oh ew a start up” the whole point is to build that company up from its root and make a name for it so people start talking, and to be a part of something like that is incredible.
Blog Post 5: Current Work and Critique
The first photo is of a collage I made for my Visual Studies 1 class. The goal was to make 2 collages(only 1 posted) with at least 120 cut up pieces of an image and begin to learn how to understand Photoshop. To achieve this goal I played with the selection tools in Photoshop and once I was comfortable, I looked at the Pinterest page and found something I liked and created something similar with my take on it. I used one photo that had a building downtown and nature in the background. I selected the nature areas and copy and pasted to create the strips. I was hoping the sky with the clouds would add a bit of texture, but it really didn’t in my eyes and the different angles aren’t as noticeable as I had hoped it would be, so I will go back in and work on it to see if I can do that.
The second photo is the second to last step in a line inventory project done in Foundations of Art and Design. The basis of the projects was to learn how to use pens and get us to think about what we are drawing and how. I went about this my drawing all of the basic lines in the first round of the inventory then pushed it after filling the boxes in with black and using the Xacto knife to create white lines that go together like a puzzle. Part of the project once we had done 3 sets of line inventories was to gesture draw an object, create a sculpture of it, shine light through it and trace the shadows. In the positive or negative space, or both you filled it in with the lines from the line inventory. The photo above is my final product. I had sculpted a bike out of pipecleaners, so it wasn’t sturdy so it was hung to shine the light through it didn’t create a definite shape. The strongest aspect is the area filled with black, because that whole area is cut with the xacto knife to where the white underneath is showing. The weakest is that in some areas it looks cluttered and messy, so it isn’t as appealing in those areas. To strengthen this I think I could have not drawn as many of the shadows to make tiny spaces and kept more bigger ones to the lines would be in a bigger space and more noticeable. Some of the places where I had cut out where so thin they actually tore and I wish I would have done it a little differently so it wouldn’t have done that, but I do love what I produced and the feedback I got was great. I enjoyed this project it truly pushed me, because I am used to working digitally, and I only do really quick sketches before I work digitally, so when I had weeks worth of things to draw and draw neatly if freaked me out at first, but I did enjoy it more than any other project I have had this year so far.
Blog Post 4- Upperclassmen Work and Websites
Part I: Responses
Faith-Photo Communications
The first upperclassman to to present was Faith and most of us already knew who she was from class, and I thought it was fun to actually see her work. I thought it was beautiful and she know what she wants to do for the time being. She has a goal in mind she wants to achieve, but knows as long as she is in the world photographing she will make it through life just fine and happy. I liked that her presentation encompassed not only the steps and classes she took to get where she is but also her work and how it makes her feel. It was comforting to know that throughout her time in school she has found not just a job but a passion that is worth the possibility of unstable work at first or difficult circumstances, it is how I hope to be.
Mary-Graphic Design
Personally this is the presentation I was most excited about because I am majoring in graphic design as well, however I was slightly underwhelmed afterwards. I feel like the whole alien thing distracted the audience a bit because even when it came to questions students were asking about her research on aliens and communicating with them more than the major itself. I wish she had shown a bit more of her work not just the work she had done for the DIY site because I think that was, yes something graphic designers will have to do, but I would have enjoyed seeing something a bit more intensive she had to to along with the book about aliens. She and the presentation was entertaining and put together, I enjoyed her tips on getting work and going out into the world and doing the work and she has a similar take on graphic design as I do. It isn’t just a text, a poster, a symbol, it is there to say something that simplifies a meaning or connects to a meaning or something larger to make it simpler or quicker or faster for everyday people.
Diana-Arts
Diana was very real. She took us through all of her schooling and her thoughts throughout and it was highly enjoyable because at a certain point we all know what we like and know what we can do and where we are weary about doing some things because we either aren’t comfortable, don’t think we are great at it or both. It was refreshing to hear from a student that change from not being completely comfortable to hearing and seeing her break out of the comfort zone she went in with. It was also unique that she was also in the field of education, I think we assume most people will create their own business or open a studio etc. and she is tying into something that is still going to have an impact but in a way I hadn’t thought of which is by teaching smaller kids art. I’ve only taken one art class and the was in sixth grade but I never thought about why art teachers chose that job because, they could be in the art industry making art for themselves but they choose to be their for students, and sometimes they still do personal work on the side so they can have an impact that is a little different than some artists but still have that passion in their everyday life.
John & Omar- Interactive Game Studies
The Interactive Game Studies presentation was entertaining. I know next to nothing about gaming just when it comes down to playing. I am not a gamer, no where near it. I do know a little bit about animation but that is it. It was informative about what the game studies students will be doing and having examples of most of it was helpful and informative and it was nice having some guys present considering the rest were women. It was nice to see how they have viewed their experience and they also spoke about how much time and work goes into what they do and so did other upperclassmen, but John and Omar went a little more into depth about just how much work and trial and error it takes.
Part II: Websites
From Up North
www.fromupnorth.com
This website is one of my favorites to get inspiration from or look at artists and designers. It is user friendly and all of the categories are neat and the site is updated frequently and new art and designs are not just added to pre-existing categories, but put in the category as a new folder or the same title but with a new date so it is just the new current ones, but all of the older ones still exist. It is easy to find what I am searching for and it is modern and got re-modeled within the last year.
Erin Fetherston
https://erinfetherston.com/home
This is a website for a fashion designer, it is simple and modern with light colors that still have an impact one of them being gold which is clean and chic and used frequently, it is definitely eye catching especially to female viewers and the chic element lends to the high end fashion she is designing.
Daniel Spatzek
http://www.danielspatzek.com/home
Extremely modern and user friends. Simple and chronological. There isn’t much to distract a viewer’s eye and it lends itself to a bit more of a “Tumblr” feel that a normal website.
Forever21
http://www.forever21.com/
This is a very common website, but I do enjoy it and it has gotten better over the years that I have been visiting the site. I remember when I first went to this site to do some online shopping I did not like the experience I had, but I do now. It is clean and easier for users to go through and find what they are searching for, but it also reaches a wide variety of people. It can lure in people who are prim and proper with some of the clothes mixed with their thin category fonts and light font colors, but the boldness of some aspects bring in the edgier customers.
Time Management
Over the course of the week and mapping out my usage of time I found that the only thing(other than my class times) I keep pretty much the same each day is when I sleep and when I get up to get ready. I use my time a little differently each day but still get everything I need to done. I typically get my work done in large blocks of time or in between my classes so that I do have that time to get it done without losing sleep because I am one of those people who have to have sleep or I get cranky. I also realized I haven’t been watching as much TV as normal compared to when I live at home and that I don’t run everyday like I did at home, but I could be doing that whenever I had down time and chose to check youtube or take a nap. Saturday is completely different that other days just because when I know it’s okay to go home I go home and visit my family and boyfriend because I know it’s a difficult adjustment for my mom, so I like to stay connected and go do things with them.
March 6, 2016
Graphic Design Promotion BPA Contest
“Make it happen” 8×11
2106 Alayna Trudo