Family crest

One project that I really had fun with in my senior year was the end of the year zenith project. The project I chose was to design a family crest for my family. I made 3 completely different designs for this project, but the second one I made was by far my favorite.

The idea behind the crest was to represent my family using animals that embody some of our traits. This was a simplistic idea but the actual design behind it was difficult and took a long time. One of the main challenges was finding a proper background for the wide range of colors. I initially decided that I liked a light brown the most, but it didn’t look right so I tried a gradient. I tried a new gradient tool because the regular one wasn’t right for this shape. I used the freedom gradient which is just the regular gradient tool except it lets you draw the path that the gradient will take using anchor points. Another challenge of this project was making the dragon because it was far more complicated than the other animals. The dragon was challenging because I had to make a lot of scales and mesh it well with the gradients. I think I did a good job making the dragon look good and I am very proud of my progress during this project. As you might be able to tell from the quality of design the order I designed the animals was Coyote, Tiger, Bear, and Dragon. I am proud of the Tiger and coyote but I think the ones I made last look better.

Explorations

Another project that I really enjoyed throughout my freestyle career was the final in design class for our Junior year, the explorations project. The explorations project guidelines were to pick a program, tool, technique, etc… that you don’t know how to use and teach it to yourself. The goal of this project was to be able to teach other students about your project once you had finished.

The tool that I chose to learn was the 3D effects tool in Illustrator. The tool was extremely challenging challenging at first and I had a lot of weird screw-ups. Once I figured out how to use the 3D tool with multiple youtube videos and a lot of experimentation I decided to make the final project about at Star Wars legends character that I like. The character is names Revan, and the only thing you need to know about him for this project is that he is torn between the light and the dark. I thought the 3D effect would help to create an even more noticeable distinction between the two sides. I used the 3D tool to make most of the project, including the sun, moon, Jedi temple, Sith temple, Mask, and the Lightning. I think I did a good job with this project and I am very proud of it but I could have done the 3D effects on the Jedi temple a little better. I also wish that I had made the sith temple at an opposite angle to the Jedi temple to make it a little more symmetrical.