orchiz

[orchiz]

FRIDAY 02.25.22

DAY 30

HOW DO YOU FEEL BEFORE PORTFOLIO REVIEW?

Yes, so today is Portfolio Review. I have hinted about this over the past few days as you know that the Perspective Drawing I have been working on is a requirement of this process. Though I only had the weekend to do it, I actually feel as if it is one of my best graphite pencil works from how it turned out with the limitation. But they have me for a 2:30pm time period today, which was nice because I get to sleep in. However, as I type this I am extremely nervous.

HOW DO YOU FEEL AFTER PORTFOLIO REVIEW?

Confused, very positively confused. I got to sit in front of a lot of instructors and professors I never met before on Zoom, which at first was really intimidating not going to lie. But after the first half of the evaluation I started to find rhythm in my speech, and flowed with the descriptions of my work. And interacting with the professors I found myself learning about things I could improve on which was very helpful if anything. Overall, they said they liked my concepts and see a lot of potential in the exploration I take to generate ideas. Though my technical skill could be refined. So, as of now I am actually unsure if I’ll pass or not, but regardless I feel really good.

03.03.22 note: I passed! I found out this morning around 4 o’ clock. Such a relief and will be celebrating!

LAST ENTRY

After stressing out all day there’s not much I can get into but maybe I’ll continue this blog in the future, but cater it towards a long-term subject. I plan on spending the rest of my night catching in up classes after taking an intensive writing course under my wing. I look forward to Spring Break heavily for this reason, and with Elden Ring coming out. I won’t be doing anything other than looking to find interests in my personal works again after this semester. Here’s to a final post of things I am working on currently to give you a glimpse of what I’ll be busy with.

[orchiz]

THURSDAY 02.24.22

DAY 29

ANIMATIC DRAFT

As you guys know, I’ve been working on my draft for my stop motion animation. And going through the thinking of it I think the idea that it has grown to be is quite perfect. It has the potential to be something kind of cool, it is supposed to be an infinite loop, so I’ll start at the beginning. Since the word in MINE, I chose to make an internet culture reference of mine turtle walking through a mine shaft and exploding. The explosion turns into gas that takes the shape of a Valentine’s heart that reads ‘be mine’. Edit: This is what it turned out as later on, not as good as on the computer but still the same idea.

NOT MUCH AND LEAGUE

Other than that, there wasn’t a lot going today, we reviewed each other’s animations which were actually pretty sick. But nonetheless tonight I’ll be working towards the final idea of the animation, and getting ready for tomorrow’s portfolio review. If you were wondering as well, yes I did start playing league again today, and been spam playing ‘J4’ aka Jarvan. Been winning a lot of games, and will be pushing Platinum soon.

END POST

With Spring Break coming up, I can’t wait to be able to take it easy finally. I was thinking about grinding my work out but I feel like if I were to stress myself out too much over break it wouldn’t be doing me any good in the long run. So I’ll likely be spending time with family, and grinding Elden Ring out in the future. Then getting ready to close out this thread. It’s been cool, and I might even find myself doing it again in the future. Who knows?

[orchiz]

<h1>WEDNESDAY 02.23.22</h1>

<h2>DAY 28</h2>

/*<img src=“hatsgalore2.png” alt=“Wednesday Post!”>*/

<h2>WINDING DOWN OR WINDING UP?<h2>

<p>We are just a little bit ways off of finishing up the blog, and it’s been quite the thirty days. But it’s not quite the time to start slowing down with portfolio review coming up, and I’m really scared hearing that I’ll be in a room with people I have never met before judging my work. But not thinking about it too much today is the day I’ll be turning in another “stylesheet” style tile for my low-fidelity wireframes in my Web Design class. And honestly I’m kind of proud of the way it turned out for the most part.</p>

/*<img src=“xqcpog.png” alt=“xqc stream hype”>*/

<h2>XQC STREAMS<h2>

<p>One of my favorite things to do while working now is watching streams or shows in the background for white noise. Recently I’ve been getting xqcow vods of him reacting to memes and such, and since he’s not usually distracting to watch I’ll pop on one of his videos or go into his stream to keep me entertained when I need to look away for a couple of seconds.</p>

<h2>END POST</h2>

<p>Been refining my portfolio, and getting everything ready to present. I’m kind of excited since I’ve never really gone through this process before in anything, and thinking about it I have really improved over the semester. I guess just having to type that out is necessary to say because after comparing myself to others it feels like I’m not really there yet. But I will be soon.</p>

[orchiz]

TUESDAY 02.22.22

DAY 27

2’S DAY!

It’s T-mobile TWOSDAY, which is usually one of the days I look forward to the most since there’s discounts or free things being given away on my app. But honestly it wasn’t too exciting, and usually misses more than it hits. I didn’t even realize honestly that this was something that was coming up until commercial advertisements made it a big thing. 

GAMES?

Not necessarily, but I’ve been working on my typography animation project which is coming along nicely. We just turned in our storyboards and stylesheets which don’t actually look too bad. I’ve also been watching out for Elden Ring to come out, so I’m staying on top of the trailers patiently waiting to drop sixty-bucks and fifty hours over spring break. I don’t like any solo-player games often but this is one series I can stand for.

END POST

Other than that, nothing else going on today, just kind of taking it easy after a rough weekend. And trying to catch-up on work as usual, but I thought instead of dragging that on that I would cater to something to look forward to. 

[orchiz]

<h1>MONDAY 02.21.22</h1>

<h2>DAY 26</h2>

/*<img src=“exhausted.png” alt=“Monday Post!”>*/

<h2>SCHKEWL</h2>

<p>Today I learned how to Illustrate a Favicon, which is the icon on the website tab for our website redesign project. We are working through moodboards right now, so that was just about it. But when I got home my parents were pretty excited to talk to me about the stuff I laid on the ground overnight, I never really share my stuff because I feel as if it isn’t showcase worthy sometimes. So it is kind of refreshing to hear that it’s worth for what they are. </p>

<h2>FINAL DAY</h2>

<p>It’s all lead up to this moment, and I scanned all of my works into the Indesign Portfolio. I only had a few hours left to finish, so I spent the last hours refining, and making things darker. Even playing with the lighting to add a new element into the work. And for what it turned out to be, I am actually really proud of it. I decided after a while that just knowing when to stop and submit would be best for myself and for the sake of time. At the time I’m writing this I was really worn out and tired, and just completely burnt out. I’m just glad that it came through over the weekend.</p>

<h2>DAY 4 OF 4</h2>

<p>Though the work of the background is unfinished, and it is missing complex details. I feel as if I had more time I’d be able to do a lot more to this in terms for lighting captures and material textures. I have no issues with the linework or dimensions of the piece and ran into some technical errors like formatting, but other than that I think this is definitely amongst a top 3 piece for me.</p>

[orchiz]

SUNDAY 02.20.22

DAY 25

SUNDAY IS NOT A FUNDAY

We are nearing the end of the week and it’s coming faster than expected. With deadlines stacking up I am starting to think I was in over my head, and really doubting if I’ll be able to finish. But since I already started I mine as well see it until the end. After finishing homework from other courses, I got back into the drawing, and in between breaks I started laying out my portfolio work to scan into the InDesign Template for Monday.

SHADOWS, MATERIALS

Remember yesterday I was looking into training myself into methods of getting a realistic look with graphite pencils. Good thing my parents bought me this graphite kit a couple years ago, otherwise I didn’t stand a chance to begin with; shoutout to them. As I lay out the values for my drawing I want to start out with an HB pencil (not too light, not too dark), and plan to overlay that with B2/B4 values in the future. This was a huge refinement step, a lot of re-evaluation in the work to separate the foreground, midground, and background. This was an essential step to take to move away from the flat design.

DAY 3 OF 4

After a long day of referencing the original image, I got a lot of my values from using a black and white filter on photoshop to light up lighter places and darken darker areas as well. It helped me greatly in forming the subtle details of the perspective shown.

[orchiz]

SATURDAY 02.19.22

DAY 24

THINKING PERSPECTIVE

De-stressing was a big step forward today into picking back up my project from where I left off today. I spent most of the early morning watching videos on how artists create perspective to refresh my memory and build up my thinking while eating, working out, and taking breaks. Sometimes I’d even follow along on a separate piece of paper to see how gradients and graphite values mesh together. In my engagements with these exercises I found myself quickly restoring my skills and knowledge.

THE NEXT STEP

Generally, the goal today was to finish linework and start thinking about shadows. Which is why I spent a little bit of today retraining my eye with graphite values and shading methods (i.e. hatching). I actually got a lot done throughout the process even though it doesn’t look like it. Because of the limited amount of time, I’m using a lot of my time the first couple of days focusing on the “symbol” of McNeal and starting to think about how I’ll use values to replicate material looks (i.e. carpet, metal, and cement).

RESPONSIBILITIES, MUST BE FASTER

I’m just now realizing as well that I also have coding assignments coming up for my Web Design course. Doing some deep breaths and continuing on planning out the rest of my weekend to speed up the process of my drawing while considering other factors as well.

DAY 2 OF 4

It’s coming along, whether I’ll get it done on time is a total mystery. But I remain vigilant and determined to do it to the best of my ability without taking any shortcuts that would sacrifice the overall quality of the piece. And staying connected with my professor to get their insights. 

Note: I understand at the beginning of this blog that I wouldn’t talk about homework that much, but things unfortunately did not go to plan. So maybe instead you can follow along the chaos and learn something with me.

[orchiz]

FRIDAY 02.18.22

DAY 23

GRIND, GRIND, GRIND!

This morning was really quick, I got up early today to talk with my instructor about some information for portfolio review. And to skip the details, the summary is that I’m missing a class, and without that class I won’t be able to go through the process (which means more time, and more money). Frustrating, but I digress, after a bit of talking it’s sounding really impossible but I need to do a perspective drawing of McNeal in less than 4 days (including today). I said to them that it’ll be an easy thing to do; even though it usually is a process that takes a month. But I’m up for the challenge if it means I can graduate on time. So this weekend will be refreshing my memory on how graphite goes on paper, and spending waking minutes to finish quickly.

Essentially, I’ll be updating my progress on this blog for the next three days to follow my intensive study of a perspective drawing and take you through my thoughts as I go.

LINE WORK..

While I was at the school after having a genuinely fun conversation with my professor, I went around McNeal taking photography of different unique perspectives to use for my project. I like the upwards perspective photo, but decided on following the formula of other examples and settling on a standing forward perspective instead. The goal today is to lay out the line work for the drawing early on with a light H6 graphite pencil, and set design decisions early to relieve some of the details in case I can’t get to it. I already know starting out that the staircase is the main focus along with the railings being the most essential detail because of it’s dynamic movement and leading lines.

DAY 1 OF 4 RESULTS

So far the pace is good, but I feel as if I could’ve gotten more done. As I did this for hours on end with setting up the photo, converting the grid measurements to the canvas, and lining it out; I was in discord with my friends to stay motivated.

[orchiz]

THURSDAY 02.17.22

DAY 22

HOW’S THE PROJECT COMING?

It’s nearing the end of the week! We just started doing stop motion animation, and getting to know the tricks of how to get cutting, tearing, holes, crumpling, smoothing, and folding effects. The apps we explored for the most part were Life Lapse and Stop Motion Studio. I prefer Stop Motion Studio, only because it sounds more adept at the assignment.

WHAT’S THE STORYBOARD?

Not gonna lie, it’s looking a little rough. But generally I want to make a looping effect to tie the beginning and the end together. I want to start the story either with the pickaxe or the turtle, but right now with the word ‘MINE’ I want to use the acts of mining, love, and the explosive device to create a piece. As of what it is now, I’ll explain, it starts with a pickaxe clinking (hitting rocks) until it hits the button of a mine turtle (child-friendly illustration choice) to explode, then form into what will be a heart shape (to depict love, and togetherness). Whether or not I’ll add an intro or ending caption is uncertain.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Well not really as far as school goes, and like I said I want this to generally focus on stimulating details of my thirty day consumption. But my UX class was fine, it’s kind of stressful coming up with interviews and making a prototype of a smart fridge interface (and model). But we are figuring it out. And Design and Discontents is still going well I just figured out I need a project done over the weekend for portfolio review next week so I am working with my teacher to get that done.

END POST

Generally feeling really stressed, so I’ll be spending the rest of the night catching up on work. I have a lot of emailing to do, and gotta lay out this perspective drawing tonight (chipping it little by little). I’ll do my best to give myself breaks, but the heat is on this weekend. After this I’m gonna be going to refuel, and treat myself to some sandwiches.

[orchiz]

<h1>WEDNESDAY 02.16.22</h1>

<h2>DAY 21</h2>

/*<img src=“glare.png” alt=“Wednesday Post!”>*/

<h2>WHAT’D YOU CODE TODAY?</h2>

<p>This morning we spent some time learning how to make slideshow animations with script, and generally how to use CSS to make transitions. Because today is the extended deadline for some exercises I spent tonight coding video formats, and teaching myself how to use autoplay features. I think it’s cool too that youtube gives you the embedded code for videos when you click share (extremely useful, and something I’ll use from now on).</p>

/*<img src=“tftpenguin.png” alt=“6.5 set discussion!”>*/

<h2>IS TFT SET 6.5 GOOD?</h2>

<p>It actually is! My friends and I have been waiting for this set to come out for a while. IF you’re not familiar with TFT it’s an Auto Chess (Autobettler Genre) game where you assemble a team that battles on a hexagonal board round for round. It’s pretty fun. My opinions on the new set however, I think the hextech trait sucks a little and tryndamere (chemtech, challenger) is kind of broken.</p>

<h2>END POST</h2>

<p>We did Intramurals today, kind of threw the game away, but it was kind of fun. Haven’t really been feeling League recently. Unfortunately, I have to go to sleep early tonight, so not really much happened today. But I made my own nachos with the leftover food in our fridge, and spent my time before bed looking up digital art tutorials. Still visually studying how to draw, but eventually will put it in practice next week after portfolio review.</p>

[orchiz]

TUESDAY 02.15.22

DAY 20

LETTERPRESS STUDIO RESULTS?

Yes, I did eventually get this done. Though I rushed the format of the information this morning I am actually kind of proud of how it came out with the time I had. I wish I messed with the composition more, so I used the second part of the assignment actually experimenting with that to create visual balance (tying it all together).

But there they are! The idea of the Z was to create something that experimented with textures. On the other hand, the 2 was designed with the exact opposite intentions, and intended to use minimalist idealism with the least amount of paint possible while still retaining readability. 

NEXT PROJECT?

We are actually getting into stop motion, which is almost (not quite) in my expertise. We spent the day rating fonts for fun, and brain storming words with multiple meanings (minimum of three required). After putting them on the board we had to choose which was kind of hard since there was so many good ones. But I was stuck between Bark, Mine, Second, and Dice.

HOW’S THE SMART FRIDGE COMING?

We currently aren’t sure as a team how we will be approaching this UX design problem. Which is okay! But we hope to lean towards User Interface problems to avoid the extra work, and are expected to find accessible people to interview for our product. In this case, I might just interview my friends, can’t lie.

END POST

Haven’t really had the time to go study drawing independently, and have been using my time recently into practicing colors and tool interactions in Photoshop. It’s been a practice of imitations to see what style I like, and tend to do this in between classes while I wait. Tonight I’ll be eating leftovers from Olive Garden. I couldn’t go because of school and work but it was still pretty good!

[orchiz]

<h1>MONDAY 02.14.22</h1>

<h2>DAY 19</h2>

/*<img src=“fakesadness.png” alt=“Monday Post!”>*/

<h2>CODE, CODE, CODE!</h2>

<p>Today was kind of a chill day, we worked on creating personas for our project, and utilizing an InDesign moodboard template to create the overall approach to our website redesign. In my thinking I generally looked into the psychology of colors as a focus for the overall appearance of the site, and finding a readable font (that sits with industry standards). Combining elements of how design attracts more users I studied how web interactions for users are essential is getting a desired outcome. </p>

<p>Simply put, the goal here is to make the website pretty for the right context (a local food place) while giving users a reason to come back; User Retention</p>

/*<img src=“graphicdesign.png” alt=“Graphic Illustration”>*/

<h2>ANY INDEPENDENT STUDIES?<h2>

<p>Not generally, this week looks pretty stressful so I’ve been off editing and such. Trying to stay on top of it as much as possible, but now I find that the closer portfolio review comes it’s been harder to have fun. Hopefully after review I’ll find more time.</p>

<p>However, I did find an excuse to engage in video editing by interviewing my friend Josiah for another User Experience study for the website we are redesigning. It was kind of funny to go through, and though I only edited it for thirty minutes it was refreshing to make something.</p>

<h2>END POST</h2>

<p>We had tacos tonight, and I looked to get ahead on assignments for my Web Design class. So, I did some exercises on positioning with different values (absolute, relative, etc.). And made a Solitaire board, then making a simple page layout. Other than that, talked to friends on Discord and hung out the rest of the day.

[orchiz]

SUNDAY 02.13.22

DAY 18

VALENTINE’S DAY TOMORROW

With Valentine’s Day coming up tomorrow, let’s just say this, I don’t have a Valentine and I hate that. So, with that as a subject in mind I’m looking to just make this an extension of Mother’s Day. And since I am a college student, I do not have any money to extend out to my mother but I will attempt to do so with the power of Dollar Tree! Yes, because I am kind of cheap I went to Dollar Tree to go out and spend $20 on myself, my mom, and even for my dad. I got my mother some flowers, a balloon, and some of her favorite snacks. I don’t really do this often, but I could tell she really appreciated the surprise when I got home.

END POST

I don’t want to force a second subject and wanna kind of close this off here. There were a lot of road ragers today that’s for sure, and I ended my night watching a movie with my parents. Got to use those snacks for something, and also I’m just generally tired from staying up all night yesterday into this morning; which is scary when you have to wake up at six o’ clock in the morning tomorrow. But good luck to me, and good luck to all the single people tomorrow!

[orchiz]

SATURDAY 02.12.22

DAY 17

PONDERING MY HEALTH, SHOULD I DO CALISTHENICS?

So, I’ve recently come to a realization that all the work I put in over the fall and summer in the gym is steadily catching up. Though I have continued to ‘maintain’ some sort of exercise I have been doing it a lot less recently. And being that I sit down most of the time at school and at home it’s kind of a dangerous game to play with mental/physical health. So I’ve been considering calisthenics, because the trend is pretty big right now with gym transformations on Tiktok. I have felt inspired to start really leaning into push-ups and core exercises. Only so I can do the crazy things these people can do like one-arm pushups or full-body movement on their hands. So, we’ll see??

I LOVE CREATIVE IDEAS

Since we are on the topic of health I’ll make this the focus today, and one of the things recently I have been thinking about is the cross-collaboration of anime in gym trends. The one-punch man 30-day challenge was always a thing, but the longer I look at people doing it and sharing their experience I feel almost inclined to do these challenges as well. Maybe even doing the Baki pose challenge down the road, which is borderline impossible. I also had this idea about going in and doing every trend to ever exist on tiktok as a content line-up. But, we’ll see.

END POST

After looking at gym-transformations I have new hopes to believe that I can do this as well, I used to run two-miles every day to lose weight, but this Summer for sure I’ll be benching 225 pounds. So, I’ll continue training at home until then. I also low-key need to stop eating unhealthily and go back to water and no sugar.

[orchiz]

FRIDAY 02.11.22

DAY 16

I LOVE-HATE FRIDAYS

Okay, let me explain, fridays are insanely amazing but if I’m in the mood to watch my favorite creators or indulge in media consumption I am at a loss. For example, Tyler1, one of my favorite streamers doesn’t stream on fridays along with others who do the same (because they deserve their weekends as well). But I usually don’t have the time to watch them any other time of the week cause I force myself to do homework otherwise I get really distracted. In that case, I also take advantage of the weekends to stream when others aren’t to ‘catch’ viewers looking for something to watch during the weekend so it’s a loss-win.

OVERWATCH, THE RISE AND FALL

I missed, or still miss Overwatch and coming back to it made me kind of upset. The game was ruined because they wanted to restrict role independence which was one of the key unique features of their game! The reason they did this I assume was to stop metas, like the three tank, three healer dive comp meta that took over the competitive scene long ago. And instead of nerfing or fixing the game to compensate for this change they decided to restrict-roles down to the classic 2 tank, 2 dps, and 2 healer comp. This no only raised queue times for my strongest role (Soldier, Reaper MASTERS dps) but killed their game entirely soon after to the point where Jeff Kaplan even ditched out. Really upsetting honestly, and though I’ll never reach Masters again or be as good as I was I came back strong and reached high platinum before deciding not the play anymore.

END POST

The nostalgia was kind of worth it nonetheless, but I think generally as far as dps games go maybe I’m just not fit for the genre anymore. Maybe I’ll wait for something to come across again, but I think I’ll stick to playing Fortnite and Valorant every once and a while.

[orchiz]

THURSDAY 02.10.22

DAY 15

ROUGH LAYOUTS OF LETTER

Waking up spry in the morning I wanted to work on the rough-layouts of my letter being that it was due in a few hours, and I don’t know why I do this to myself first-off. Second-off it actually ended up being a really good session to foster creative direction, which was to focus on textures rather than composition. So, moving on from today I decided to go with working the textures of the Letterpress Studio and using the letter history to compensate for compositional design.

A LITTLE LOST, BUT NOT REALLY?

Going through some of the things in my classes I am almost lost within the details of what the User Experience process is, or am I? My professor says that she is shocked by the way we have carried on this project, and I agree in the sense of how we have organized the material together. I’m kind of worried though since she’ll be looking to bring in the program director and a professional someone whose profession is UX design. Maybe it’ll go well? I don’t know.

END POST

I didn’t write into this later on but it did in fact end up going well, and to see other students carrying out their products is kind of inspiring. We ended up going into focusing more so on the UI of the fridge rather than the fridge as a whole (only because it’ll be too difficult to design an entire fridge without the money and resources for a prototype). Anyways, it’s the end of the week so I’m ready to just be able to chill out at home and do whatever I want with my mornings the next couple of days!

[orchiz]

<h1>WEDNESDAY 02.09.22</h1>

<h2>DAY 14</h2>

/*<img src=“hatsgalore.png” alt=“Wednesday Post!”>*/

<h2>IS CODING GOING WELL?</h2>

<p>Ehhh..yeah about that. So, yes I do understand how to code more and more by learning from others, but my design senses are doing the things where I compare myself to others. So I need to stop that, on the other hand my teacher says we are allowed to use general inspirations from websites code and layouts with our own creative twists; there’s that.</p>

/*<img src=“haloinfinite.png” alt=“Halo Cinematic Trailer”>*/

<h2>HALO INFINITE</h2>

<p>I didn’t realize this game was free, and with me going through fps games a few days ago I decided to give this one a try! And honestly, it was kind of cool to go back to a series I gre up with. I go a few of my friends to play it and I even tried ranked, I was kind of cracked not gonna lie and ended up above the bell curve. However, I feel like I’d only like to play this game for fun only because some of the weapons in the game are questionably unbalanced (overpowered) which leads to frustration later on that I’m not ready to deal with. So, I’ll stick to the big team game modes.</p>

<h2>END POST</h2>

<p>Kind of a lazy day today, just stuck to spending time refining some of my drawing skills and getting inspired. I really want to do Inktober this year and commit to it, so in order to do that I want my art to be presentable especially being in a graphic design profession I’ll definitely need these skills later down the road.</p>