Final words

Well, last post. Goodbye High School.

I especially enjoyed learning about Android Jones as an artist, since I studied most of the art movements my class talked about in the earlier years of Digital Arts classes.

Vectors introduced me to Adobe Illustrator, even if we couldn't go in-depth with it that much. The Anti-bullying poster involved a lot of Photoshop. The Android Jones portrait introduced Painter 12, which was a lot of fun to play with. The T-shirt design was also lots of Photoshop. The Animated Still in After Effects was the hardest part of the class. The one thing I learned from all these programs is that technology can be a pain in the butt if you don't know how to use it properly.

I wanted perfection for all of my pieces, but certain submission requirements (coughcoughThreadlesscoughcough) and surprisingly enough, my own work strategy got in the way. The latter point was discovered when I was working on the Android Jones portrait, when Ms. Thompson was telling me that just going nuts with the portrait face was okay, to which I responded, ". . . But that's not logical."

I hope that my vision as an artist has improved greatly over the past semester. I've learned that an artist's process can work several different ways. Sometimes the method one artist is most used to is not the best method. New strategies and styles allow them to branch out, although it may be uncomfortable for them.

Animated Still

This is my final project, a still image animated with After Effects. For the sake of time, I used my portrait of Metanine for the image. The animation is at the very end of the video.

Animation in After Effects was a pain in the butt. The tutorial we were told to use was working with a different version of the software I was working with, so it was very difficult to make progress. Learning about the program first really would have helped. However, once I figured out the software, it was very fun. After mastering basic movement of the figure, I played around with the puppet pin tool. It's not perfect, but I don't want to undergo the two hour rendering process again!

I hope the end result rustled your jimmies.

I learned the basic controls of After Effects and that creating Art often comes with serious frustrations.