Enjoy a glimpse into what goes into my art..

Enjoy:

Creative Process Video (Final)

Concept Development

This class has been a wild ride. I'm fortunate to have met an awesome group of talented and up and coming designers and artists. I look forward to seeing what the future holds and collaborating with some of the folks who jive with my styles. I know I have a lot to learn, but I thnk I bring a special brand of awesome to the table. Anyhow, I gotta say that Jimmy has been truly inspiring as well, I appreciate the angles he took to give us an altered perspective on things. So a big thanks to Jimmy and the rest of the gang for making this semester useful !

John Coy

His talk was truly inspiring. I really appreciated his indirect mention of the teachings of "The Secret" and tapping into the Universe using the law of attraction. It seems to have worked for him. I was also really impressed that he was the designer who created the Washington Mutual logo, I used to bank with them until they got bought out, but wow, talk about an image you see everyday. I'm glad that we had the opportunity to hear him talk about his life and philosophies and see his body of work.

Scott McCloud

Watching Scott McCloud's TED Talk is borderline mind-blowing. Especially having a bit of insight after having read a couple of his books ('Understanding Comics' & 'Making Comics') I really appreciate how he relates every part of his talk to what was said before, no matter how remote it may seem, there is a connection. Another aspect of his talk that I liked was how he showed how ancient that comics are, going all the way back to Egyptian story panels, throughout time all the way to the present. Quite fascinating.

As much as I was familiar with what he spoke about, there were nuggets that I was curious to dig deeper on…

Mind Mapping

On Wednesday Jimmy showed us a number of really creative ways of organizing and categorizing thoughts called 'Mind Maps" some of them were really silly, while others were quite productive from the looks of them.

After checking out a bunch of examples, we were given time to develop a mind map of our own. There were no stipulations really, so everyone kind of went in their own direction. One girl in class was mapping out the changes her life would take if she were to wake up as a zombie. I in turn explored the possibilities of having absolute control over one of the 4 elements (Water, Wind, Earth, Fire) I really thought through what my powers would be and how they could be beneficial in everyday usage. I gotta say: it was pretty rad.


Toward the end of class we got to watch Scott McCloud's TED Talk… (more in the next post)

Ranking our work

Monday was the day we turned in our 4 frame comic on "How I ended up in college" I enjoyed the assignment because I have been fascinated by graphic novels and manga for quite some time. It was a great opportunity to be creative and use a format I am usually the consumer of rather than making.

Upon turning in our comics, we were instructed to place them along the front table so that we could walk by and read each one. Soon after we were instructed to 'rank' the work from best to worst as a class… a scary task indeed.

In order to not be confrontational we decided to use a tally voting system, where each student had three votes to place on any three different comics. this did most of the work for us. Now we needed to just break the ties, and have sub-elections to resolve the order of the low ranking pieces.

That method worked to please mostly everyone, with the exception of a few students, who were then instructed to do it themselves.

Although, I was pleased to have my comic ranked 3rd on the hierarchy. I think the critique would have been more productive if we had a discussion where the reasoning behind the criticisms could be explored.

I didn't know sh*t [until I started working]

The other day at Cal State LA, graphic designer Seth Johnson spoke of his experiences in the field of Graphic Design. The talk was quite enlightening as well as entertaining.. I really appreciated his approach to the field. Especially since I'm still a student designer with limited experience in the business end, it was helpful to get some advice about how to protect myself and my work when I do start working with clients.

Process

When it comes to a big project, most of us have trouble getting started. It's that delay that subsequently affects the rest of the project. Ultimately making a stressful situation and the quality of the end-product probably suffers as well. So given the things that aren't variable, (deadlines etc.) what can be changed to improve the outcome. Those early choices can be and usually are pivotal in a healthy design process.

…from the git go.

Starting at the core. The professor had a plan. He challenged the class to observe and describe.. the most basic concept involved in the design process. With the class unaware of what was to come, he distributed one small orange mandarin fruit to each of us. We were then asked to take two minutes to truly absorb it all in, use our senses, to get to know the fruit in our possession. When the timer beeped, the plot thickened, we find that now we must communicate all the attributes of it to a partner for the next two minutes without showing the actual fruit to them.. I must say this is not as easy a task as it seems.

In my experience, I found that it was difficult to communicate as thoroughly as taking in the sensory experience. Even though I was quite specific about its shape (diameter at the equator vs. distance through the poles), colors(variation), texture, smell, and other details specific to that particular specimen. There is too much information in the experience that is inevitably left out in the description. This phenomenon is hard to describe. Challenge yourself with a friend, and see if your experience is any different.