If you cannot see the images, please zoom out, then zoom back in (To do so on Chrome, click the 3 dots in the upper right-hand corner of your Tab, find “Zoom”, click the minus sign, and then click the plus sign).

Mandala: A Self-Portrait

The Mandala was meant to show our creative side: what would we do with a blank slate, and how would that reflect ourselves? Instead of creating a simple mandala (due to a misunderstanding of directions), I worked to great lengths to include imagery that I considered represented me. The end result was a unique mandala that I could say with confidence was mine. I ended up printing it on wood, as there was some difficulty with line creation on the plastic I was originally going to print on. Nonetheless, it looks pretty good to me!

Photoshop Pastel: Apricots

The pastel project came at an interesting time: my dad had just bought a new copper jam pan, jam jars, a copper pot to heat up the jars and their special airtight rubber lids, metal strainers and cheesecloth—the whole shebang. For his birthday, I decided to make a bunch of labels for each of his jams: Apricots, Raspberries, and Vanilla; Nectarines, Apricots, and Ginger; Persimmon, Mandarinquat, Cinnamon, and Ginger; and Plum, Orange, and Cardamom. For the labels, I chose to add images of the various ingredients, using old 1800s botanical prints (which have a Very Cool Aesthetic). For the pastel project, I decided to make a pastel version of one of the botanical prints I used, and settled on apricots. I think it looks quite nice!

Photoshop Watercolor: Iketani’s S13

One project we had in Digital Media was learning how to use Photoshop brushes to create a watercolor painting (as opposed to layering effects to make a photo look like a watercolor painting). I chose to paint a vehicle from a favorite anime of mine, Initial D. The vehicle is a 1988 Lime Green Two-Tone Nissan Silvia K’s S13, and belongs to someone by the name of Koichiro Iketani (hence the title).

Photoshop Painting Artist’s Statement

When I heard we were making watercolor paintings, my head immediately jumped to painting this vehicle. I have painted various vehicles from the same car-based manga, Initial D, made famous in the 90s by its anime (It saw a resurgence in the past 5 or so years—in fact, certain car prices have jumped as a result!) The first vehicle I painted was this one (admittedly not so well), so I decided that I might as well use it for my first digital watercolor painting. Unlike many other watercolor paintings, mine uses hard outlines—as a result, it’s less “soft” or “warm” and might not quite match the traditional idea of watercolor, but I felt it matched the art style and subject better.

Photoshop Surreal Composition

The surreal composition was one of my less favorite projects in Digital Media. While the methods were fun to learn and use, I couldn’t muster a composition I truly liked.

Photoshop VR 360° Gallery

The VR 360° gallery was a project that introduced a portion of Adobe Photoshop I did not know existed: the ability to create a 3-dimensional space, and to create a project that one can interact with. It wasn’t easy: you actually have to edit your images to look bulged and incorrectly-proportioned in a 2-dimensional space, so that they will look correct in a 3-dimensional space.

Before and After Comparison

The Before and After Comparison project was exactly what it sounded like. Now that we had learned a bunch more in Photoshop, what could we do with some images?

Multi-Layered Art Project

Part 1: Planning and Physical Creation

Introduction

The Multi-Layered Art Project, or MLAP, is a physical product that, as its name suggests, features multiple layers. I chose to make stacked wood art, in which I designed layers which were then laser cut onto wood and glued together.

Rough Sketches

Here are my rough sketches of my layers! See if you can find the changes made between this and the final, cut wood pieces.

Physical Cutouts

Part 2: Video Creation

Time-Lapse Video

Here is my time lapse video! I recorded myself with a Freestyle camera actually building the product.

Digital Assembly Video

For our second video, I was to use my newly-acquired After Effects skills to display my illustrator files (the designs that the laser printer used to cut the wood).

Artist’s Statement

My inspiration for this project was my own film camera. I love film photography (both monochrome and color), and developing that film. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a general love of older, more mechanical objects—and film cameras perfectly fit the bill. I chose to make my wood art version of my camera a 2:1 size—but I forgot about the three dimensional aspect of that. So while the width and height of the wooden model is twice that of the actual camera, the depth is off by a factor of 4—so the ratio of width (or height) to depth is a staggeringly inaccurate 8:1! Nevertheless, I had great fun with this project—especially the building aspect, in which I filmed a time-lapse of the approximately 2 hour process of gluing some layers, letting them dry, and gluing more layers (and so on and so forth).