A little glimpse ...

I am still working on my final project for Color Theory, which is to do a full spread on any event, real or fictional. A full spread is 3 pamphlets, a banner, and a webpage mock-up. I am doing a fictional gardenwalk that my mother and her sister who live in 2 different states would host simultaneously. The idea would be that they would have photo displays of each other's garden set up so that people could view the other garden in a different state as they walked through. Here is a picture of the banner that I made. The colors are sampled directly from photos of the flowers that are on display (the ones farthest to the left in the photo banners). I have the pamphlets done, and jsut need to to do the mock-up next.

A little Andy Warhol

I am a bit bummed that my Color Theory teacher only gav eme 90 out of 100 for my Audrey Hepburn picture. He said I could have used my colors better. ARRRGHH! Well, let's see how I do on this assignment: it is to be a self portrait and used colors that express our emotions. We had to write up what those emotions are, so -- I did an Andy Warhol type collage expressing how I feel/felt about migraines. Meredith read the short description and was bothered by it, and I would liek to say that it was not easy growing up with them -- for me or the people around me. I thank them all greatly, for it had to be as hard on my family as it was for me. I will always love them for all that they endured -- family past and family present (that goes double for Meredith!).

Portrait of a Migraine
Ever since I have been 2 years old, I have suffered from debilitating migraines. Sometimes they start off with wavy spots and lines before my eyes, or a tingling sensation in my extremities. Sometimes there is vomiting involves, and always there is massive pain around the eyes and in the head. The pain intensifies in direct relation to the amount of light that I am exposed to. A lot of times I get very confused and cannot verbally communicate, and this earns me a trip the emergency room, and sometimes a hospital stay. I am now 40, and on average suffer 2-4 migraines a year. This is how I see my migraines.

The first picture in the upper left with the reds, yellows, and blues is a total capture of one of my migraines. The yellow is the bright light that I become acutely sensitive to, causing me massive amounts of pain and suffering. The red is the manifestation of that pain as it permeates my head. The blue is the emotion that I feel, a depression that once again I am going to feel miserable and in great pain.

The second picture represents my hidden thoughts about the way I feel about myself and the migraines that are a part of me. As I went through elementary and high school, a migraine could be triggered by anything, even a bump on the head. Because of this, I was not allowed to play in sports, had to attend a special gym glass, regular camps would not accept me, and it all made me feel like an outcast. It was very depressing because this was a major sign of weakness, and I was the target of many bullies. I feel that I only had one true friend back then who understood what I was going through, but it was not enough to keep me from feeling lonely. The depression was to the point that at times I had considered suicide, but did not have the strength to follow through. The blue is for that depression, with the yellow being my cowardice and shame at the thoughts of suicide.

The third picture with the red and green is how I was made to feel by the rest of the world because of my migraines. There were times when I literally felt like the Joker character from the Batman comics. When I was at school and started to get a migraine, there were times I was told to go lay down in the hallway and wait for my parents to pick me up. As I would lie there, students going to lunch or gym would be paraded past me, all looking and pointing at me, not understanding my plight. To them, I was a freak. The color scheme itself represents me feeling like that freak, but the colors mean other things individually. The green represents the envy that I felt towards the other children who did not suffer the way that I did, that led normal lives. The red is for the anger that I felt, not at them, but at myself for being so different. Even to this day, I still feel a bit of that anger, especially after being in the hospital and wonder “What did I do to deserve this?”

The final picture goes through the steps of a migraine as I perceive it. The squiggles and the lines are what I see when a migraine starts to attack me. The yellows and the whites are the bright lights that will be my antagonist for the next several hours. The red is the intense pain that will pound against my head. Green represents the illness itself, and the orange represents how I feel different from the rest of the world.

A little help ...

I had a person at work "hire" me to make a logo for her. It was nothing too serious, just needed what you see here. She asked me what the name of my company was for her paperwork that she needed to turn in, and so I have been thinking about it for a few days now. At first, I was thinking along the lines of "Mad Scientist Graphic Design" or "Evil Genius Graphic Design" because of what I want to do with Frankenstein XIII. Meredith on the other hand was thinking about Taking the first two letters of my first and last name, and that became "DaMo Graphic Design." I shot that down real quick because 1) my sister's nickname is "CaMo" for the same reason, and I wanted my own name, and 2) what the heck kidn of graphic would you make for a "DaMo"? I then realized that using the first two letters of each of our names (DAvid and MEredith), you get "Dame", which is slang for "woman". but is defined as the wife of a knight. So at work tonight I was tossing around ideas and was thinking of some nice fonts (ones that kind of flowed and had some nice curves to them), and thatthe name could be "The Classy Dame Graphic Design Company". I could then have a mascot (a classy looking dame) sitting on the "D" in "Dame" ... be it on top of the "D" or inside of it ... or maybe even standing with her back to the spine of it.

Anyhoo ... that was just something I was tossing around. I would like to have a side business to do stuff like this, and to get my name out there. This way when I finally do get to go to a Game Designer's Conference, I will have a nice portfolio and a list of accomplishments that I can show to potential employers. Not to mention a little extra cash would be nice.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Classes for next term

I know I jsut posted, but I jsut found out that my next term's schedule is up. I will be taking:

Life Drawing for Animation (7 credits)
This course covers advanced drawing concepts as they relate to character modeling and animation.Topics include basic human anatomy and form as it relates to the surrounding environment, spatial relationships and introductory sculpting techniques. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to effectively capture and develop gestures and motion in various media (pencil, pen, watercolor, clay, and sculpey) for use in 2D and 3D animation.

Game Analysis and Playability (4 credits)
This course introduces students to the concepts behind the development of games, conceptual reflection, genres, and the determination of what actually defines a game’s playability. During this course, students will play games, investigate code or sample aspects of existing games, and document and critique the effectiveness, efficiency, and aesthetic qualities of the sample games. Upon completion of this course, students should have played several games and documented the playability by critically analyzing the graphics, sound, artificial intelligence, and intended audience.

And I will be taking a course in Algebra (3 credits) as well. All sounds exciting ... especially the Game Analysis. I'll keep you all posted on how that goes!

Grades for Week 5, a new picture, and a migraine

My apologies for being late with my grades this week. One of my two teachers seems to like and wait until Sunday to post grades. That is somewhat annoying. Added to it that Meredith and I went to a nice hotel for our anniversary (3rd), and then had teh strangest of migraines on Wednesday night. It was as if the migraines was having problems starting up. I was at work and I was reading a book when I started to get the spot in my eye. I looked up and the spot tracked, and so I was going to leave when it went away. I decided to stay. I went on break a little later, and got a massive headache that almost made me fall over, but instantly went away. When I went on lunch, my entire leg went numb in an instant and so I went home and went to bed. That was the worst of it and slept through the night. I have been to teh doctor, and he feels that I suffer from migralepsy ... migraines triggered by a form of epilepsy. He has put me on Keppra, which is an anti-seizure medicine. So ... let's see how that works out for us.

Anyhoo ... my grades are:

Digital Illustration: 587/630 for a total of 1036/1100 (94.18%)

Color Theory: 151/155 for a total of 1349/1475 (91.46%)

My comic book cover got a B (87.5%) because I could have shaded more, and I accept that. The new picture that I have up I had to do for Color Theory. It is Audrey Hepburn. I ahd to take a black and white photo and paint it with one color and any shades of it to try and express the emotion of the picture. Purple is considered teh color of royalty, nobility, and is often considered to be an erotic color, and I felt that it best described Audrey. Hope you like it!

Grades for Week 5

I am sorry that I did not post this last week, but I had a trip to the hospital for a massive migraine. I am feeling much better now, but it was one of the worst two migraines I have ever had. I ended up with an MRI, a spinal tap, 3 shots for nausea, blood tests, and who knows what else. I will be seeing a neurologist next week and will see if there is anything new out there for me.

Anyhoo ...

Digital Illustration: 83/90 for a total of 449/470 (95.53%)

Color Theory: 703/795 for a total of 1198/1320 (90.76%)

I took a hit in my Color Theory class because my report was too short. He liked the colors I used for the "Jaws" movie poster and liked my ideas in my report, it was jsut too short. Oh well. I can still pull an "A" out of the class.

The picture that I have up was my first project in Digital Illustration. We had to come up with a comic book cover with a super-hero of our own creation. So ... here is my first incarnation of Frankie!

An interesting assignment

In color theory class this week we had to do a painting of something nature related using as true a color as we could. So, as my mother is a master gardener and has a buku load of flowers in her garden, I used one of her photos from my assignment. It took me about 8 hours to paint using the tablet that my wife got me for my birthday (I love all three ... my wife, my mother and my tablet!)