Month: January 2024

As someone fairly new to the design field, there are many tools I have the opportunity to advance throughout this program & beyond. Luckily I’ve always been quick to learn new concepts when I can put the work in. I’m great at visualizing ideas in my head & feel like I have a better understanding of technology & computers than the average person.

I’ve always been a creative thinker & problem-solver, however, my health has put a damper on this in the past causing an uphill battle. So far in class, I’ve learned new ways of thinking that are helping to grow these tools. The program teaches me that there is so much more behind design than you initially think. Understanding design theory, the principles, color, type, etc. are new concepts to me that I’m getting a grasp on for the first time. Thanks to Jason & my quick learning skills, I’m beginning to learn a lot about design software. Although the skies are the limit when it comes to these skills, I feel I have a good foundation right for growing them throughout my career.

3 major tools that I need to invest a lot of time in are time management, communication & presenting. Having ADHD has made managing my time a struggle & I always seem to be pushing at the last minute to get something done. In high school, I was never great at communicating or presenting my ideas. After COVID kept me out of school for 3 years, I realized I never had a chance to strengthen these skills before SCCA.

Unfortunately, I am a perfectionist. Although this has benefits when it comes to the final product, I’ve always struggled with letting my ideas be. When I’m sketching it’s difficult not to judge my ideas or latch onto an early one. I also have a tendency to never be satisfied with the work I have done. I always want to push myself & fully fledge out every idea that I have. Well unfortunately my mind & body can only handle so much & my limit is almost always less than I wanted. It can be difficult to be happy with a project or feel satisfied when I know I’m not able to put in as much effort as I want. Luckily this is slowly turning around, as my grades surprised me last quarter. But, there’s still a ton a progress left to be made & I know that I am not going to be successful if I can’t learn to just let things go.

My chosen prompt was playing frisbee with a cat at the park. When I think of this I imagine a sphinx cat catching a frisbee in their mouth mid-air like a dog next to a tree in a grassy park area. Their owner is in the corner of the image having just thrown the frisbee.

Here’s a rough sketch of what I had in mind;

The free image generator I chose was craiyon.com. I began with a simple prompt: “A sphinx cat catching a frisbee that their owner threw in a park next to a tree.”

Here was the best result:

The cat clearly DOES NOT look realistic nor is he jumping mid-air. The tree looks like a stump & the owner is nowhere to be found. Somehow this was the best result they gave me, half replaced the cat with a human.

After figuring out the problems I went back in for round 2.

“A sphinx cat jumping and catching a frisbee in their mouth next to a tree in the park. Their owner is off in the corner after throwing the frisbee.”

Better… although the cat still looks very alien-like. The tree looks more realistic & the cat is in mid-air, though you could argue they’re climbing the tree. Still no owner in sight.

I get one more chance to make it count. Here’s the final prompt:

“A person throwing a frisbee to their sphinx cat that is jumping mid-air to catch it in their mouth in the park next to a tree.”

Although this was butchered, it’s still the most accurate of the 3.

Now I’ll admit, I haven’t spent too much time yet experimenting with AI image generators. I may just not know how to write prompts correctly or this just happens to be an awful free generator. I wanna lean closer toward the latter considering I know I’ve generated better images in the past on sites I don’t remember.

There are definitely more cons than pros for this site as you can see. It was never truly able to capture the prompt I was looking for & the correct aspects looked like something from another planet. Either way this has taught me that I should spend more time exploring AI, practicing writing prompts & absolutely trying out different sites.