This assignment was pretty simple. We were to take pictures of letters and numbers found in buildings, nature, cracks in the pavement, etc. One of the main objectives of this project was to make us look more attentively to our surrounding environment, and to see everything with different eyes.

After taking the pictures, we were told to compile them into any visual form we wanted to present to class. I chose to make a video with all my pictures in it.

This project was a little challenging! I knew I wanted to make a video, but I really had no idea what form I wanted it to take. I’m happy with the final product, though!

Also, finding all the numbers and letters was pretty hard too. Most of them came easy, but some of them were hard to find.

For this project, we were told to look for patterns in buildings, nature, etc. and compile them all in a blog post. I was surprised at how many patterns there are in the wild! I guess it really shows that you need to pay attention. It was fitting for an exploration activity.

I decided to compile my patterns in a radial design. It’s not very interesting, but I thought it fit the theme, since the divided circles kind of make a pattern themselves.

This project was definitely fun! It was really interesting finding all sorts of patterns where you’d least expect them.

For this assignment, we sat somewhere for an hour and recorded all the sounds that we heard in that time period. After that, we had to make the recorded sounds a visual concept and put it on our blogs.

This project was completely open and we were free to do whatever we wanted with it. I chose to create an abstract video showing the nature of the sounds and their locations from my perspective.

Because the nature of the video can be a little confusing, I prepared two versions: one with no indication of what the sounds are (just the visual motifs), and one with subtitles describing the sounds.

The original version is meant to be watched first. It should prompt the viewer to imagine what the sounds are based on their visualization.

The viewer can then move onto the subtitled version and see if they perceived the sounds as they were intended to be perceived.

This project was a lot of fun, as it allowed me to be creative and just go crazy with it. It’s a shame that I couldn’t present this to the class or get critique on it, as I think it would’ve been an interesting experiment.

The goal for this assignment was to tell the story of Jack & Jill in any way we wanted on 8×8 sheets of bristol, while utilizing any of these dingbats:

As this was a group project, every member of the team contributed something to the idea. Unfortunately, my input was very little, as I was sick on the day that my group started brainstorming ideas for the project.

The finished product turned the rhyme into a story about a soldier who goes off to war, and his sweetheart constantly writing to him while he’s on the battlefield. The finished product looked like this:

During critique, it was mentioned that our idea was unique and that the mounting helped visualize the motif better, but that the second half of the project contained too much red, and thus was unbalanced.

I’m not very happy with this project, mostly because it was a group project; I couldn’t get full creative control. I wasn’t completely dissatisfied with it, I just wish I could’ve done it myself, as it would’ve given me a lot more freedom in terms of creativity. The craftsmanship would have also been consistent.

Overall, it was a learning experience, I suppose! For a group project, it could’ve gone a lot worse.

For this assignment, we were told to go on a walk and document fifty things about it, in any way we wanted.

I recorded my walks and selected fifty audio excerpts that conveyed what taking the walks was like. I can’t seem to embed the file so you’ll have to click here to hear it.

For this assignment, we were asked to convey six words through a design using only four black squares.
There were no true “limitations” and the project was pretty open, but I couldn’t think of any positive design choices other than just having the black squares on a white background.

Here are the designs I came up with:

ORDER

INCREASE

BOLD

CONGESTED

PLAYFUL

TENSION

Our second assignment was to take a shape and lay another shape on top of it. After that, we would subtract the overlaid shape to create a new one. This would be our “motif”.

We were to take that motif and make both 1 inch and 2 inch versions of it. The professor then made photocopies of both, totaling 125 little motif squares. This was my motif:

We were then supposed to take the motif squares and arrange them on a 10×10 grid to make a design out of them. These were all the designs I experimented with:

Finally, we were to take the design we liked the most and fill the separate shapes in either black or white. No outlines were allowed, although grid lines were. This was my final piece:

During critique, it was said that my piece was simple, but the fact that it had a good rhythm and balanced made it pleasing to the eye. The professor said that, while I took a risk by making it simple, it ultimately paid off and it made the piece interesting.
The only negative thing said about it is that there was a tiny smudge of ink on the top part of it. It was an accident, and I was upset that I couldn’t get rid of it!

Overall, this assignment was interesting. It was kind of hard to work with india ink and to make it look clean, but I’m happy with my results.

For our first assignments, we were told to make a design using only lines. These designs were split into four different kinds of lines: vertical and horizontal, diagonal, curved, and a combination of all the above.

We first had to make 25 thumbnail sketches for every kind of line, totaling 100 sketches.

HORIZONTAL/VERTICAL

DIAGONAL

CURVED

ALL OF THE ABOVE

After making all the thumbnail sketches, we had to pick one and cut the lines out of black construction paper, and paste them onto an 8 x 10″ sheet of bristol.

(Sorry for the pictures, I would’ve liked to scan them but I had no idea how I would go about doing that.)

I felt happy with my finished pieces, except for the last one. It was difficult to cut and it just created an unbalanced mess of lines. I’m not too fond of it!

I’m also particularly upset because I had a couple of sketches that would’ve been more interesting, but they would’ve taken way too long to cut and I would’ve missed the due date for them. Oh well!

Critique was really brief; nothing was said about my pieces other than they were the wrong size. I didn’t really check the size on my bristol board so I assumed it was the right size for the piece. Whoops~

Overall, I think it was a pretty fun assignment! The only part that got kind of annoying were the sketches; it was hard to come up with so many different designs! But all in all, I enjoyed working on this assignment. I felt really good when I was cutting the thin lines and the knife would just make these really clean cuts, it was kind of like magic!

Hello everyone! My name’s Enrique, but please call me Leo. It’s easier and I’m more used to it.

I’ve always really liked art. When I was a kid, I knew there was so much more to animated films than just funny jokes for kids. I knew that there was a lot of work put into films, television shows, music, and everything else. After all, the credits after a movie were practically endless!

I’m majoring in Film & Television; this might change to Animation, but I’m not sure yet. What I am sure of, though, is that I’m gonna have a great time here and I’m going to learn so many wonderful things about the world of art. I’m really looking forward to it.

Really looking forward to it.