Edith Valle's Creative Portfolio

For my book, I wanted to show the different ways that gentrification can affect a community, specifically the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood.  I wanted to design my book to be a children’s book. In order to show the effects of gentrification for a child to understand, I told the story from the point of view of an Ice Cream man. Since ice cream men usually have brief encounters with people, this allowed me to create short stories and at the same time show the many different people in the East Cesar Chavez community. I added my own illustrations and explored styles in character drawing. I also challenged myself in keeping a color palet of 5 colors in order to keep it cohesive. Overall, I am very happy with how my characters came out and I am eager to develop this style of drawing. 

This project was very interesting to me because we actually had to go out and experience the places we were going to be designing for. I really liked that we had to do this because it gave me inspiration as well as a deeper sense of initiating a feeling when making a design. I did my designs for the Austin Poetry Slam as well as the Planet K Museum. Both of these places value art whether it be the art of words or the art of creating something visually pleasing. I decided to make these stickers and I went about designing them by hand drawing my designs to compliment the spirit of these places. By doing this, it really helped me connect even more with what I was creating. This was actually the first time I felt confident incorporating my own drawings as into my designs. I also acquired more confidence in using Photoshop. I think that using my drawings more in the future will really help me develop my style as a designer.

For the Weather Report, the objective was to use the concept of LATCH to create a motion piece that organized weather conditions and temperature in different cities. Going back to the influence I get from Latin American culture, I decided to do my weather report over cities in Chile. I chose Chile because it has a very diverse landscape. Although I liked the outcome of my video. It did come out to be a minute long. Which meant it was 30 more seconds than it had to be. After doing this project I realized that despite the fact that I have improved on executing the desired effects, I still think I can work on organizing content in a more efficient way. Although I was content with the graphics, I thought that my display of the information could have been given more importance.

The objective of the LATCH videos was to improve my organizational skills when creating motion pieces. It was useful in learning the concepts of motion as well as sub motion. I wanted to practice new things such as masking and parenting objects in my videos so I really tried to incorporate that as well as other effects. I feel like the LATCH videos really helped me with my timing as well as focusing on how the content pertains to the movement.

This project was quiet unlike the others I had experienced throughout my other GDES classes. It was different in the sense that we were not creating something for visual aesthetics. Rather, we had to design a bag that had all the proper equipment or things you needed for a day out in the city, but yet, unique to yourself. I tried to be reasonable as to what I would take on a normal day. Despite that, I also incorporated some of the more colorful things I tend to use to highlight my liking of color

The objective of the Critical Mass project was to create an animation that was an allegory for a scientific concept. I chose the concept of decomposition. Although decomposition relates strongly to death many forget that life is also an important part of that process. I wanted create a piece that focused more on life or renewal. I used an algebra problem to show how the breaking down of something difficult(death) could lead to understanding(life). I wanted to make it comical to further influence the more positive side of decomposition.

This project was also my first encounter with after effects. Although it was a difficult learning process with a lot of trial and error, it was very fulfilling to see the product. It not only helped me with my understanding of time and motion, but also improved my organizational skills with layers in illustrator to make that process of transferring files much smoother. I think that is one of the more important skills I learned from doing this project.

Artifact Map

The Artifact map was a map we had to make that documented our daily movement from home to class/work. To create a successful map, it had to be effective in getting someone to the places I have been. I had to choose my colors very carefully because I learned that colors hold certain meanings when it comes to reading a map. I live on campus so to make my map more distinguishable from the other maps of the campus I wanted to highlight the view of Austin. I pass by the view at least once a day on my way to class to admire it. In a sense, I wanted to bring a more poetic way of looking at my map by taking the time to look at the scenery of Austin which I incorporated at the top. Because I spent a lot of time on the scenery, I did neglect the craft of the actual map a bit. I could have spent more type on the paths and landmarks which are the more essential parts of being able to distinguish when it comes to the function of this piece.

Perceptual Map

For the Perceptual map I really wanted to do a meal that many people would not know about. As a way of incorporating Mexican culture I decided to do my map over a native dish to the state of Michoacan where my family is from. This dish is called “Toqueres,” and it is basically a corn patty that is often eaten with fresh cheese and salsa. Although we had to highlight the 5 senses, I wanted to focus on the more abstract sensations such as time and atmosphere. I wanted to demonstrate how it is often a familial activity to prepare this dish as well as very laborious. I only showed the women in my family which alludes to the fact that in the Mexican culture, the kitchen is often a place for women to hang out as well as a place for the mother’s to pass down recipes to their daughters. For this reason, I drew my own sisters and placed my youngest sister with the 1st task of de-graining the corn, and as I moved along the path, I placed my older sisters with the more difficult tasks. My mothers is the closest one to the end of the path symbolizing the passing down of this delicious tradition.

Cognitive Map

The Cognitive map is probably my favorite out of all the maps I created. I used what I learned from the symbol project much more prominently in this piece. To me, this final product seemed the most complete of the three maps. The objective was to create a map that would help someone make a decision. During the time that I made it, I myself had trouble thinking about what to get my friends for Christmas with the budget of a college student. I tried to think of gifts that were more low budget as well as gifts that were very thoughtful. I left many of the answers open ended enough so that anyone who actually followed it would still be able to make it more personal to their relationship with that person. I also gave options for those people who have to give a “I have to,” kind of present in order to make my map more holistic.

The inspiration for this collage was the word “Capitalism.” The objective of this exercise was to create a collage that embodied the word you were given. Figuring out what to do for my collage was the easy part. Although I am happy with what I produced, having to use photoshop to make the collage was very challenging. I felt like my lack of knowledge in the program really put me at a disadvantage in creating something perhaps more sophisticated, or at least more iterations. Although I felt somewhat discouraged at the time from using photoshop, I have recently tried it again I’m starting to get the hang of it!