Final Project

Final project. I thought this one was one of the easiest and most fun projects to work on. Makes for some interesting compositions I found, and while I would take some things out, I had to have them in there for the project requirements. Ah well.

Week 15 Doodle

Not much time to draw this out, but I LOVE the symbol tool. I think it's one of my new favorite tools, and can't wait to really get going on the final project where we get to use all these fun tools.

Map Project

I think if I had given myself a bit more time, before trying to upload (and still having issues with moodle and my project. It just doesn't want to leave me for grading...). I think I got too bogged down in some of the effects, but hey, it was a good learning experience.

Week 12 Doodle

I had a lot of fun with this lesson. I LOVE the effects menu and applying them now that I know where I can find them. I used the effects on the sand, the bubbles, and the pearls. I thought it was cute.

Week 11 Doodle

My Doodle here used a lot of the paint brush tool which is my new best friend, and some of the transparency tool in the hair. I had a lot of fun making this and was inspired a bit by pop art with the colors and by Nagler (I think that's how you spell his name) who is more of a pin up artist, but uses simpler lines and softer colors for his pieces.

Week 10 Doodle

I tried to work with the challenge, while using the pen tool and the gradient mesh. I like the gradient mesh a lot, and plan to use it more as the course goes on. It makes me happy to finally have some of those tools under my belt.

Project 2

Not much to say about the cards. Learned a lot, and plan to fix and possibly use some of these.

I took the same design I used for my InDesign class for the partycity part, but other than that, I tried to use different colors to get practice for next week's project with business cards. I think I'll make more changes, but this helped to give me an idea on what to expect for next week.

Week 6 Doodle

I just did a simple cowboy boot. I took an image I found on the web, imported it in as a texture, and traced with the pen tool over it. I also used a bit of the line tool, to make the single lines. I played around with the stroke and fill colors, and made my own color palette to use. Pretty simple, really.

Project 1 - T-shirt design

I had no idea what to do to start with, so I looked through photos on my hard drive to see if inspiration would strike. It did with the photo of the dancers en point I believe it is called. I felt that some of my friends would enjoy this design and it appeals to the little girl in me who still likes pink and purple and would love to learning to ballet dance. I felt that the feet should be the main focus of the piece, but not so much that it should be in the center of the composition.
I wanted the piece to appeal to little girls, and so I added the crown, which I modified off of a clip art piece I found online. I felt that this, in a way, symbolically made a statement about the little princesses in most little girls. I also felt it tied in with the dancing feet in the fact that dancers get to wear many different and sometimes unusual costumes.
I also felt that this design would work better as two sides, with the feet on the right side of the front of the t-shirt, and the crown on the back, but since we could only design one side, this is what I went with.

Week 4 Doodle

I was trying to go for a retro feel from the '50s. I ran into some design problems with the middle star, as I feel it's a little heavy for the piece, but it gets the doodle done and maybe I can tweak it later. I made all the stars myself, with the polygon tool and layering at least two on top of each other and then cutting the insides of one away to make it look more connected without showing the strokes through the other star. I used a lot of the dotted stroke in this piece to get that disconnected line look. It helped make the back lines look like that random paint pattern you see around a lot in old '50s diners. I love that teal color, and other than white and black, is the only color I used.

Week 3 Doodle

Just a very simple one this time, I've been sick lately and crunched for time in this class and the InDesign class so I'm trying to play catch-up tonight. I used the polygon tool, as you can see, as well as the path outline option, and the stroke adjustments. I didn't create any new swatches, but used what I had already preset, which may have come with the program and what I might have added from the exercises with Deke. I did use the rotate tool on two of the circles, making that wave pattern going down vs. to the left, but it's not as noticeable which was the whole intent. I didn't want this wave pattern to be the main focus of the piece. I also used that inside stroke option to get that very faint line between the two strokes. I also while using the polygon tools held down the shift and options keys to make sure they were centered and to make perfect shapes. I just wanted something simple and shapes are about as simple as you can go.

Week 2 Doodle

I got a little too into my doodle and was having fun, but this is the final turn out. I used the spiral, arch, line, brush, and star tools. To make the star and lines the way they are I used the ~ key command, which I think turns out pretty cool. I only used three color pallets, green, blue, and yellow. I also used the gradient tool for the background which is just a giant square filled with the gradient.

Intro to me

Hi,

My name is Nikki and I'm working to major in Graphic Design. I have applied for transfer in fall of '09 to Cal Poly SLO and SDSU. I've taken a range of classes dealing with the Adobe products and have loved every one of them thus far. I hope that by being in two online classes I'll be able to keep up a bit better than trying to schedule my life around a set time to go to class. I'm taking three "studio" classes this semester: InDesign-online, Illustrator-online, and Design and Color-on campus.

I work full time at Party City in Encinitas, and I do custom invitations and banners from a program called Inscribe. It's not all that hard, but I feel it's a good step in the right direction to getting me some experience in working with customers and figuring out design elements.

I'm a really upbeat person, and love to have fun with text and colors, almost to the point where I over use them. I love working with the cool color pallet but am trying to bust out of that comfort zone and work with colors I usually don't.

I really don't know what else to say so I guess that's it.

Here's a photo of me taken at Disneyland recently and I guess it's my personality in a nutshell: