eywalt-blog

[eywalt-blog]

[eywalt-blog]

Hierarchy and Layers

              I really enjoyed the section on hierarchy. Especially the artwork on 128 and 136. With just a passing glance it was easy to discern headline from article. Graphic from media. Even though the headlines were more shapes than words. The article font was small and eligible. Even with all that it was easy to see what was presented were news articles. A longer look and I could tell one paper talks about the devastating path of a hurricane. Another, a possible on going crises in a foreign country. So the structure seems to work. Pick up any textbook and it is pretty obvious where to find the table of contents or the glossary. So the structure not only works but pretty universal on how it should work.

              The chapter on layers I was a bit meh. As long something stands out from the background it is a layer. The black text I am typing is a layer over the white screen. So a layer is not really a layer, but just the use of space and background. Digitally speaking of course. It is important to point out I am not married to this viewpoint but merely trying to fill up the word count. Now back to the topic. I think I am just getting hung up on the term. Layer does sound better than digitally manipulated space.  

[eywalt-blog]

Come Sunday I'll really hit the books for this upcoming mid-term or I could spend 3 hours cooking pork belly. Time well spent?

[eywalt-blog]

[eywalt-blog]

[eywalt-blog]

Point Line Plane

I initially only glossed over this week’s chapter. Rushing to get it out of the way so I could move on to something that was occupying my mind more than this reading. The design concept seemed pretty clear. Dots become a line. A line forms a plane. A plane creates space and volume. Okay. Got it. Chapter ingested and by Friday I will regurgitate some text to reflect my understanding of the chapter. A simple task. After all letters become a word. A series of words creates a sentence. Sentences fill the white space of this response. Boom. Done. Design fully conceptualized within a hundred words. See you next week. This of course is not what happened.

Considering how fast I glanced over the chapter it is not surprising that I didn’t give much immediate thought to the concept it was trying to illustrate. What was surprising was in the following days I started see things in this point line plane overlay. I would be out jogging and I’d notice how the path and everything around it would disappear to the same spot in the distance. Same thing happened walking the sidewalk in front WSU. The trees, the sidewalk, the grass all seemed come from the same point of origin. It reminded of an art class back in middle school. Drawing a line and picking a single point on the line. From that point anything drawn (mostly boxes) could be traced back to that single point. I remember how much depth it created throughout the whole drawing. I guess my biggest take away from this chapters is don’t let the concepts I read about only be limited too graphic design. Try to see these concepts in all things.

[eywalt-blog]

Formstorming

Good read this week. Short, quick and lots of pictures. Honestly though I really did enjoy this chapter and got some idea of project one’s objective. As I write this response it is difficult for me to stay focused. My mind is elsewhere thinking of memes. When the project was introduced I was so concerned with finding a meme that checked all the boxes. Is it popular? Will people get it? Can I recreate it? I scrolled endlessly through google images, group texts and threads. I wasted two days searching for an adequate meme. Is there any irony in that? I was so focused recreation when I should have been focused on interpretation.

I think the ah ha moment came from Jackie Littman’s Dozens of Eggs. All the iterations from some such a simple subject was a real slap in the face. It never dawned on me to take this visual brainstorming approach.  In my limited experience my approach has been: there’s a subject, create something around said subject and now make it work regardless of frustration or lack of interest. The funny thing is outside of DTC I don’t have this problem. There is no issue when I have to write a paper or create a program. I have many ideas in my head of how I am going to approach it, but I’m not married to these ideas. They often go through many iterations and in the end I think the finale version of the paper or program is a better representation of myself. So I wonder why I have such a disconnect when it comes to creating something visual?

[eywalt-blog]

Bauhaus Response

              In all honesty I have to admit to my complete ignorance when it comes to terms like postmodernism, impressionism and any other ism when it comes to art.  As an outsider I never understood why art was measured by these titles. I am not ignorant to the fact that these are styles of art that defined a point in time, but isn’t art just art regardless of when or how it was created? Maybe that’s why I found this reading difficult to relate to.

              After searching Bauhaus I immediately recognized the style, especially how a large dominate shape defines or influences how the smaller shapes will fit with inside of it. Relating this to our current assignment has me wondering though.

              In the beginning we had programs like MS paint. A simple program where creating or altering images was basic, time consuming and very frustrating. Creativity was very limited. Like all things imaging and editing software got better. Much. Much better. So when we create something like the low poly image are we merely paying tribute to something like postmodernism? Are these movements like fashion cyclical? Though these movements have been expressed in a lot of mediums such as art, clothing, and architecture. But now these movements have a whole new medium in technology. That might be my biggest question. Are we paying homage or are we reliving these periods through technology?

[eywalt-blog]

Great job. I really like how the jersey turned out.

I decided to create a poly art of Kobe Bryant. One of my favorite basketball players of all time. He was the reason why I first picked up a basketball in grade school. Lebron James might be the greatest player (currently) or even some may consider him the “GOAT” (Greatest of All Time), but Kobe was the best to do it in his era and to wear it in purple and gold. This was my first poly art, while it was difficult at first to get used to, once I got the hang of things I would say I enjoyed this assignment/exercise.

WSU-TC

DTC336: Low Poly Art

Created by Tim Chu.8/31

[eywalt-blog]

When I first started the assignment I picked a photo with too much detail. Portraits with hair covering the forehead were incredibly difficult to work with. That’s why in the eleventh hour I picked a photo of somebody bald like Joe Rogan. I also found it hard to see natural geometric shapes within the original photo. So I made a grid pattern of repeating diamond shapes that covered the entire face. After that I began to fill in large areas that were light in color. As I moved to the right of the photo I started to make smaller diamond patterns within the larger ones. I did this in hope it would show depth to the altered photo. Lips and eyes proved difficult to maintain when it came to pattern. I just freehanded shapes inside my overlaying pattern to get something that resembles eyes, lips and a nose. I did enjoy working on this project. Looking back I wish I would have scraped my earlier attempts sooner and focused on something a bit more manageable with the given timeframe.

-        Ethan Walters