Module 6 Sketches

My website will be a non-profit website to help women who are both Soldiers and Mothers.  Most of the details for my design are included in my sketches.  Thanks

http://digitalartepiphanies.blogspot.com/p/sketches_17.html

Module 5 E-Card

Final product as well as techniques utilized are posted here:

Final E-Card Project

Module 5 E-Card Sketches

Module 5 Sketches

For this E-Card I've chosen solar power as the basis of my card.  Solar Power is very popular where I live right now (Hawaii).  Electric is very expensive here, so when looking for a home, it was very important to us to find a home with at least some solar power.  The home we have has a solar powered hot water heater.  Our typical electric bill is around $500 a month - and that's without AC running.

For this project, I really wanted to take advantage of some of the photos I've already taken since I've been stationed in Hawaii.  I tried to model my project around photos that I already knew I had in stock.  I would like to take advantage of some of the new techniques I've learned in the Lynda.com videos such as creating a reflection, color enhancements, and possibly creating a panoramic view.

I have an amazing picture of a Waikiki sunset from a Luau I attended and hope to use that for my backside once I make some color modifications to it.  I want to keep the card simple and too the point and try to incorporate some very vibrant colors.

For font, I plan on using Papyrus font.  I haven't decided on a font color - but I'm leaning toward either black or red to ensure it stands out on my likely blue sky backgrounds.

I researched some facts on solar power, and plan on incorporating these facts into the inside of the card.  I like the idea of using a question on the front side of the card to encourage the reader to open the card.  Since, I don't have any pictures of solar panels, I'll either have to figure out a way to take a picture of ones on our house or find a generic one on the internet.  I really like the idea of using a reflection of the earth on the solar panels as annotated on my Inside sketches.  Hoping that I can figure out how to make that happen.

Module 5 Sketches 

Module 4 Book Cover

I utilized In-Design, to create my book template of 6”W x 9”H front and back covers with a 1”W x 9”H spine (a technique learned from Lynda.com). I then utilized the "Illustration Solution" (as referred to in Designing Book Covers Hands-on Workshop) for my photo solution for the cover by converting a historical photo to a bitmap and applying a halftone screen with a frequency of 53.  By using the "Illustration Solution" proposed by Nigel French, I was able to use a public domain historical photo of the NYC Skyline December 1941 taken by photographer Jack Delano. I proceeded to place the picture into my template and subsequently applied an opacity of 65%.

My original design had the entire book cover in black and white.  I struggled with making the title and author visible utilizing just black and white.  I decided to change the title and author to a red color.  It still didn't seem to mesh very well with the historical photo that I used for the background.  In the end, I played around with the historical photo in Photoshop and ended up applying a 35% tint of the same shade of red I used for the title/author.  The title was accomplished by using a font called "City Life" from dafont.com by Janice Faucher.  The author font and book description were a simple Minion Pro. I used a picture of Leonard Bernstein taken by Jack Mitchell for the back cover.

View Book Cover

 

Works Cited

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Bernstein

http://www.dafont.com/city-life.font

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NYC_skyline_Dec_1941.jpg

http://www.lynda.com.org/

Module 3 Awareness Poster

This is an awareness poster meant to prompt people to contact their congressman and ask to stop sequestration.  I ended up deviating quite a bit from my original sketches.  I didn't like how the designs were coming out when I tried to implement the concepts in Photoshop.  In the end, I made it simple and to the point.  I started by utilizing some of the embossing and beveling techniques, as well as inner shadow and drop shadow, and completed with the strong layer effect.  Then I tried my hand at the 3D font techniques.  I found it rather difficult since the video was based on CS5 which has repousse -  CS6 does not use repousse in the same fashion as it is taught in the CS5 video.  I looked up some of the techniques in the Adobe forums and I finally figured out some of it. I experimented with a few fonts and finally chose the font Pencil Stencil from dafont.com and created by SpiderRaysFonts. Once I got the words down, I had to figure out an appropriate background.  I wanted to play with some textured layers and try to give the impression of words carved in stone.  It didn't quite come out the way I intended, but I still like it.  I used a picture of a rusted piece of sheet metal and used simple gradient layer to make it stony looking.  Finally the hardest part – what to use for an impacting symbol.  I chose a picture of the capital building.  I added a dissolve blending mode to it.  Not quite what I envisioned when I started, but I’m still happy with the final product.  Only thing I would change now would be to go back and play some more to achieve the etched/beveled look with some of the words that I was going for.  I really like what Deke McClelland did with the 3D font, and would've like to get more of that effect.

Awareness Poster