Keith Lau

For this assignment, I had to do some creative thinking about how specific adjectives can be conveyed with only 4 black boxes. These are my interpretations:

After some generous assistance, I finally finished the edited video portion of this assignment where I recreated a screenshot with a high-fidelity mockup of the Creative Cloud App in Figma.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dnm30-UNTVSnjLlxlSSB1SJH4zIAryx4/view?usp=sharing

Sparkicks’ (Spark + Kicks) is an innovative sportswear company that specializes in creating new and unique twists on traditional footwear. Their newest creation is called the “Knockout“, a high performance sneaker developed with a decade’s worth of athletic and material knowledge perfect for designers sitting in their office chairs all day.

True to it’s name, the Knockout series of sneakers assists the wearer in their creative endeavors by granting them an hour of quick brainstorming powers, unrelenting motivation and instant access to a library’s worth of knowledge before knocking them out cold for who knows how long. It also glows in the dark when you press the button on the side. Isn’t that nice?

These pair of expertly crafted shoes is available for purchase for the low low price of $3042024 when bought during a solar eclipse on a leap year after waddling around the world 5 times. Created using Photoshop.

For this week’s assignment, my subject for a little world will be this small artificial pond located at someone’s house. I took this photo during early winter when it was still chilly during the day, and gray clouds always around.

Despite only housing around 40 gallons of water, I’d like to think of this as a little ocean for organisms too small for the human eye to see. The murky, algae filled water contrasts with the myriads of stones and pebbles around the edges, which makes for interesting subjects in each section of the photo. Though still chilly, a small population of duckweed manages to live despite the other plants having long lost their leaves in the autumn.

I interpreted this as life always finding a way to perceive no matter the conditions. I think it would be interesting to reexamine this pond with a microscope to get a better look at what lies beneath the surface.

Not much of a football fan, but I conveniently found this video featuring all(?) of the ads featured during the Super Bowl. I’m not used to viewing ads with actual budgets, so seeing the quality of some of these was a suprise. Some of my favorites include:

• Mountain Dew – Baja Blast
• Popeyes
• State Farm “Agent State Farm”
• Pluto TV “Couch Potatoes”
• Microsoft Copilot

I’ll be reviewing the State Farm skit, which I saw ads on twitter hyping the video about weeks prior to the Super Bowl.

I thought that the stop-motion effect was unique, and definitely kept my attention while I admired the set pieces and amount of people in each scene. I thought that the humor was well-written, and I think that this direction would work for State Farm’s ads outside of the Super Bowl, but less elaborate.

Another ad that I liked was the Popeyes ad featuring Ken Jeong getting excited about Popeyes wings.

I appreciated how the color scheme remains cohesive throughout the video, featuring subtle colors with the bright color of Popeyes’ signature orange drawing me in. Seeing this ad put me in the mood for some wings. Unfortunately, the closest Popeyes is like 2 miles from my house ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Maybe I’ll just shoot an Amazon drone from the sky and deep dry that instead.

For this assignment, I conceptualized some ideas for a personal project I could design that would provide me with experience in creating improved versions in the future, in addition to having an elaborate piece of work and process details to add to my portfolio. Some ideas that I had in mind for projects includes:

1. A poster for a local event
2. A video featuring a hobby
3. A slideshow for a meeting
4. A catalog for a grocery store
5. A family of icons for signage
6. A menu for a favorite restaurant
7. A website mockup for a service
8. An advertisement for a product
9. A social media post about an event
10. An infographic about an interesting topic
11. A magazine cover for a niche publication
12. A brochure about an interesting location

I’m capable of doing all of these with the level of graphic/motion design knowledge that I currently have, but the option I would like the most on my portfolio would be the magazine cover.

I believe that an improved version of this cover with some pages would demonstrate to potential employers my knowledge of combining vivid imagery, suitable colors, and well-balanced typography into one condensed project.

Some skills that I would like to gain by improving this cover would be to redesign it using InDesign, which would be preferred for working with large sections of text. I would also like to design around 2-4 pages along with a back cover to ensure to the viewer that the typography remains consistently readable throughout all the pages.

For this assignment, I chose to feature this animated logo that I created for the After Effects module featuring a shopping cart rolling into view with some item categories that shoppers may want to keep their eyes on when shopping.

Background: When thinking of a logo that I wanted to animate, I thought of some of the franchises that I was interested in. I settled on Nook Shopping, a digital shopping app for the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I had a week to complete the assignment, so I had plenty of time to do everything.

Actions: To start, I began searching for assets that I could use. Though the icons featured in the video were available as PNGs that I could import to After Effects immediately, they turned out to be low quality and looked blurry when enlarged. I downloaded them and traced them in Illustrator to create scalable icons. I had to repeat this process a few times, but it wasn’t too time consuming considering that the icons were easy to reproduce. The background was also recreated in Illustrator using the leaf icon as a brush. I also had to edit a picture in Photoshop before sending it to Illustrator, which was quick and easy.

Lastly, I sourced the sound effects and background music from YouTube using a simple YouTube to mp3 website. The time needed to create and source all the assets was around 2 hours or so.

With all the assets ready to use, I imported everything into After Effects and began animating. I personally didn’t find the animating process to be too difficult, although it did take an hour or 2 to get the positioning correct on some of the movements.

Results: The video was submitted on time, and received positive reactions from the class. The project gave me a decent amount of experience in creating my own assets and using After Effects for animation. Overall, it was a project that I’m proud of, and would replicate given the opportunity.

For this assignment, I will be reviewing the hilariously creative and fun puzzle game, Scribblenauts Unlimited, which this blog derives its theme colors, tab icon, and tagline from.

Originally released in 2012 for the latest consoles at the time, and later to PC and mobile devices, Scribblenauts Unlimited has you control the mischievous, but adventurous Maxwell on his quest to free his sister Lily from a curse after a prank gone horribly wrong.

The premise for the game involves Maxwell creating objects and adding adjectives by typing words into his magical notebook. He explores the environment around him to help solve the problems of the people, animals, and sometimes even monsters and robots in the area/level he’s wandering around in. You also have the option of playing as one of Maxwell’s ~30 siblings after finishing their respective quests in each level.

Though the game’s target audience was intended to be elementary schoolers and young teenagers, older players can take joy in the amount of wacky and maybe unintentional solutions that the game will accept. For instance…

If you’re looking for a somewhat educational game for expanding your vocabulary or testing your creative limits, then Scribblenauts Unlimited will be a memorable and very chaotic experience that’s totally worth the $4.99 ($19.99 for PC and console versions, unless its on sale for 75% off) that’s both enjoyable for kids and adults alike.

For this assignment, I needed to list several tools that I’ll need to be successful in understanding and using in my graphic design career after graduating from the SCCA.

I am currently proficient in using Photoshop for image editing purposes and generating graphics, Premiere Pro for editing, and animating videos, and Figma for creating mockups for websites and mobile apps.

The other programs I will need more experience in before graduating are After Effects for animating images, effects and video transitions, Illustrator for creating vector art for logos, icons, and infographics, InDesign creating for page layouts, and Webflow for easily creating webpages at a reasonable price.

Some software that I may need in the future, but don’t currently use or have access to are Maya for 3D modeling and animation, the Microsoft Office Suite for being industry stand software for creating slideshows, documents, and spreadsheets, and maybe AI image generating services such as Midjourney for creating concept art for mockup graphics.

I expect to have plenty of opportunities to use the software listed above in the upcoming quarters, so I should be knowledgeable about using those tools by the time I graduate in order to be a competitive candidate in the field of graphic design.