So my regular routine was shaken up today. Typically my day consisted of me sitting in the office in front of a Mac, working on projects with my headphones on for about 6 hours or so two days a week. But today was a bit special because today Prof. Chen invited Yuki and I to come with the design staff to a Photoshoot over at the Voorhees building. We were going to get some pictures of the Haunted house and the Entertainment tech students for the college website, before they took down the exhibition.  We left Court.st around 3pm and stayed there till close to 7pm; taking pictures of the whole setup, which I must say was really awesome very detailed and so well done. I’m annoyed with myself that for all this time, all this time that I was in attendance at City Tech, I never once bothered to go to the haunted house show. So basically in short today involved a lot of standing, a lot of setting up cameras and tripods. A lot of light-holding, and a lot of patience; but regardless I’m glad I was able to go.

Starting a new project today, I was asked to develop a couple of sketches involving a bullet going through a skull being held by a hand. I wasn’t sure how this was going to be used exactly but hey, it wasn’t a burger and I was excited to start on something different, so I jumped right in to making sketches for the project. Drawing human skulls is pretty easy for me to do quickly so I did a bunch and settled on four. When I was done and happy with what I had I sent it over to Prof. Chen to take a look at.  He chose on that I did on the top left corner, citing that he liked the particular ¾ angle I went with there. So I was like hey great, and I took the sketches back to my ‘office’ and was then contemplating on how I was going to scan them in, due to the office not having a working scanner. I decided to just take a high res picture with my phone and email it to myself, I’d then bring in the image into Photoshop and begin my digital coloring process. Before I even got to finish that, Prof.Chen walks in and says:

“Hey, I’ve got another project I want you to work on for me.”

And I was like

“….sure…okay…No more skulls?”

“Well…they’re good—-but I was thinking this may be easier to work with.”

And then he begins to describe the concept for the next project he had in mind. Which basically had me designing connect the dot puzzles of influential people. I thought to myself, “This is supposed to be Easy?” In no way was that an easy task; to design a moderately challenging puzzle requires you to think two steps ahead of the viewer. It couldn’t be so easy that you being to get the image of the person after completing 3 lines, yet at the same time it can’t be so convoluted that it’s tiresome after the first line.  So currently this is where i’m at in terms of work here. Prof. Chen let me know that he intends to have a series of these, approx 20+ different people…. yay! ……*sigh*

Following up on my 6th post about the burger project that I was working on, It’s basically finished now. I finished the flat colors and started working on shadows and highlights. As I was working on the project, there were a multitude of things that were changed to suit the desires of my client, Prof. Chen. The most of which revolved around getting the word ‘Don’t’ which was intended to resemble lettuce to look a bit more ‘leafy’; and to make the beef part, the final  two words of the piece—‘More Fat’–, look a bit more grilled. Overall because of the many small tweaks that were made to this project, it took a little longer to complete than I desired, just about 3-4 weeks total, from sketch to finished design. Honestly though, I was ready to move on to a new project after the 3^rd tweak that I did.

When it comes to businesses becoming obsolete due to ‘freeware’, I’m not sure exactly how I feel about that. It’s weird, due to being both a creative and a consumer it sort of makes you this weird hybrid ‘day-walker’. On one hand, the consumer side of me is happy to have these free programs that eliminate the need for me to pay for the service; yet the creative side of me realizes that digitization maybe something I will have to come into contact with or struggle against, trying to find a way to circumvent it just to make a steady living.

However, I still don’t entirely see digitization as an armageddon for business. Life is about change, and it’s not like these businesses were going to last forever. You have to have a certain adaptability to be able to truly last, especially if you’re in the tech business. The article  makes it seem as if judgment day is nigh for industries, whereas I think people would still pay for a service as long as it offers them something more that they can’t get with freeware. Take Netflix for instance, sure there are a lot of sites online that stream movies & tv series for free. So then, why do people pay per month to watch Netflix? Video quality, content offered & a strong brand identity I think are part of the reasons they haven’t yet been taken down by free streaming sites like Couchtuner.com, Youtube or Watchseries.ag yet.

So as I’ve stated in post #2, I decided to take the second option Professor Chen offered me and work more or less as his intern, and do projects for him.  So the first thing he wanted me to work on was a t-shirt design of a oily dripping disgusting burger with the different sections of the burger being type. It would read : “Don’t Pay Less For More Fat” so I started working on that. I did a mock up in illustrator, I chose a nice blocky san serif typeface then saved the image and a png, brought it into Photoshop and drew over it to preserve the letter forms. Once I was happy with the ink layer, I moved onto flat colors. I’m hoping to finish the project in about a week or two.

This week has been going pretty smooth; I received an email from Naeem that contained photos from photographer Richard Bernardin. Of course, the task was to create a promotional card by making a collage using the available photos. There were only seven photos presented for this piece; so I had to make the photos a little larger than usual and set the canvas to portrait. Four of pictures were low in saturation, two of them were monochromatic, and the seventh had an average level of saturation with red and white typography it was a magazine cover. There was not much difficulty in this task, so I completed it and emailed it back right away.

Naeem liked it, but Scott wanted me to nudge the typography’s position. In fact; Scott wanted me to make the change to any of the previous cards with similar alignment issues. I understood the direction he wanted to go, but I did not share the same views because I positioned the elements based on balance. I explained that shifting the position will disrupt the negative space and will throw off the composition. Scott understood, and we agreed that I should only change the ones I find fit. I converted five cards, which happen to be eleven percent of the cards at the time.

What a week, being down on myself did not last long; I went from not wanting to celebrate my birthday to having one of the most enjoyable moments with friends. Now back to business, but this week no word from my supervisor; nonetheless there is only one thing to do, and that is to hold up my end of our agreement by dedicating 9 am to 5 pm on Tuesdays. Eight hours later and I am free, so now I will continue to work on a project assigned by Professor Fikaris without the worry of interruptions. So the project is to design the cover for The Seventy-six Honor’s Convocation. Not really sure what direction to take I started by making a list of studies at City Tech, and words that fit into similar categories. If I wrote design and then photography, from there I would record camera, lens, shutter, iris, flash, and lens flair. I then did a Google search on lens flairs, and I thought that would be a refreshing element to incorporate in my design. I already had my color schemes: blue and yellow the school colors, but I planned to use different shades. I also thought about the first words that come to mind when I think honor. I also searched for an element to represent New York and what better way but to use the skyline. cliché, but whatever I planned to use it in a subtle way. I also incorporated some hard lines and angles to give the feel of energy. Most the elements are on the canvas just have to figure out how to layout the typography, after choosing from two pages of possible combinations of course. That decision will not be made today though because I have been staring at this screen quite some time, and I need to step away; plus my stomach has been talking to me, and ­­­­it is very distracting so until next time, bye.

Time seems to be moving so fast it is already mid-October my birthday week. Oh, my birthday? October 14th in case you were wondering and yes the class met. Unfortunately, I suddenly came down with a horrible 24hr virus, so I could not make it to class. My best friend thought it would be better if she treated me to lunch, drinks, and a visit to the spa. She figured a massage and aromatherapy would help relieve some tension. In all honesty, I have been under some stress, but I am probably causing it by overthinking and doubting myself. Overthinking things like my age and what I still need to accomplish; questioning my ability to complete a portfolio and getting a start on my career. For instance, I am grateful for the opportunity to be interning for ArtWing NY, but I do not feel like there is any challenge and there is also the fact that I am not able to network and experience the culture of the company. Questions like am I wasting my time would cross my mind, but then I would remember even though this may not be the ideal internship there is still a purpose. If for nothing else but to satisfy the hours needed for the course that brings me a step closer to graduation. Procrastination has also become a prominent issue, but it is not like I am just sitting around doing nothing; nonetheless I could prioritize more. These are the thoughts that arise even more around my birthday another year added as my age goes up; I guess it has to do with realizing that I am not getting any younger. As you may have noticed the massage and aromatherapy were needed.

Woke up feeling great today, “today is a good day to have a good day” I read that somewhere. So Scott and Naeem sent me some photos during the week so I can come up with some ideas for Tuesday. Well, today is the day, and it felt good not scrambling and having an idea of what approach I would take creating this collage. The first one I chose to tackle was a technology shoot, shot by Tatsuro Nishimura. Speakers, laptops, IPads, and circuit boards are a few of the subjects in the shoot. Some were colorful appliances, so I made good use of the most memorable shots throughout the card. I also made good use of the shapes of the electronics, by aligning the hard lines to create a good flow to lead the eyes. Once I finished that I moved on to another promo card for Tatsuro, for this one the goal was to create a piece he could send to a potential client within the organic produce industry. There were berries, ice cream, and a beautiful wood with a weathered oak finish in the photos. The purples, greens and browns worked well creating a real organic feel in this collage. I ended up making three different versions because the photos worked so well together the possible combinations seemed endless. After finishing the cards for Tatsuro I was asked to make one for Phil Knott no photos or direction provided, but it was easier to do because I was already in my zone. I was enjoying the hunt and finding ways to be creative even though it was the same structure. I chose to do a collage of Phil’s portrait shots; the portraits featured different celebrities some in color and some in monochrome. All the shots felt raw and full of energy with a good focus on the eyes. I used photos with similar elements like one with a burgundy background, another with a guy in a burgundy shirt, and then I would include a picture with a pale green background. This was my way of creating a flow by playing with complimentary colors and showing repetition in a subtle but effective way. Scott and Naeem were pleased I could tell by the praises in the follow-up email after they received the work I sent.

I woke up to a bunch of emails from Scott and I cannot say I liked the tone, it read as if he was angry. Scott was upset that I do not reply to every single email he sends; he started making statements like if things do not change soon, working remote may not be the best option. Scott said the coffee shop where we interviewed could be a place to meet and work every Tuesday. I was not too fond of that idea because I do not remember that place being the best environment for work. So I explained that I do not have a problem with the current set up. I told Scott that last week there were a few network issues on my end, and I also stated that I am only committing to an eight-hour workweek from 9 am to 5 pm on Tuesday’s. In the beginning, this was the same agreement, but I want to believe that he forget due to all the things going on with the renovation and the expansion of his business. I only found out about the increase because the classmate I gave Scott’s contact to also secured an internship but not for ArtWing NY. The internship was for a new business venture to design and code a website; nonetheless, Scott and I quickly resolved out communication issues and got back to business right away. Things were better than ever he was giving more direction and showed understanding when I did not reply to an email right away if it is outside of our scheduled work time. I explained that school and my personal life could get a little overwhelming sometimes, and he understood. The promotional cards became a lot easier to produce as well and, to be honest, I enjoy the work I do for Scott hopefully things continue to flow this smooth between us.