Month: February 2024

Creating Little Worlds / Telling Stories

The scene I chose to create and photograph for this week’s blog assignment is a macro landscape of school supplies. The primary subject of this photograph is my metal pencil sharpener that has been incredibly reliable and long lasting. The photo highlights the pencil sharpener’s use and age by detailing the patina, and positioning the product on a pad of sticky notes, as if to give it a stage to shine. I chose to use my large sketchbook to act as the main background of the scene as the spine adds texture, and having every single set piece being some sort of school supply amplifies the whole effect of the image. The other supporting pieces include a pencil, eraser, pen, and the pad of sticky notes as mentioned earlier. All of the supporting pieces beside the sticky note “stage” mostly exist outside of the frame to make sure that the sharpener gets the attention it deserves. Each element pokes into the frame just enough to be recognizable, but not too much as to distract from the main point of the image. I was trying to highlight the greatness of this cheap pencil sharpener with this image, and make the audience consider the craftsmanship and value a small and affordable item like this can possess. I took this photo with my iphone 11’s standard camera at 1.4x zoom.

For this weeks blog assignment, we are to talk about super bowl commercials. I didn’t watch the super bowl, don’t have cable, and use ad blocks as much as possible. When I was looking up the commercials on YouTube, I was surprised by the quantity of commercials.

The commercials I watched included the Christopher Walken BMW, the Budweiser clydesdales, Google Pixels blindness accessibility feature, the Michael Cera one, and the Pickleball babies.

I’ll talk about two in more detail.

The Michael Cera one was for cerave lotion, and basically it’s him pretending to be really into skin care and generally just being overly ridiculous, and then it flips to a conference room of him pitching the idea to Cerave and then cuts to saying “developed with dermatologists, not Michael Cera.” I think it did a good job at presenting an unexpected bit of humor, though the celebrity pun is a little tired (most recent example I can think of is Michael Buble promoting Bubbly water). I also think think this commercial probably recognized how to market its particular product to this particular audience. I think the choice to stray from more traditional cosmetic industry marketing for the Superbowl audience was appropriate. Something I think they missed was that the value of what they were selling wasn’t very clear, and I’m not sure Michael Cera is the most reliable spokesperson for this brand. I also think that the joke isn’t very funny but I’m sure a lot of boomers thought it was funny.

The premise for the Budweiser commercial is that in a big storm where many services are lost a beer delivery is made the old school way with the team of Clydesdale horses. The commercial basically nails the nostalgic masculine western Americana vibe it’s going for with the western looking bar, town, guy, labradore retriever, beer, and horses. I think they did a good job summoning this emotion with the imagery and music, and providing this grand sense of heroism in a beer delivery. The presentation made Budweiser look like a super elevated heritage brand. Something I think they could of done better is maybe tone down the dog. The dog was a big part of the commercial but I think wasn’t super important. The relationship between the bar / community and the beer delivery guy felt more important. I think the other thing was it wasn’t super clear why the horses were necessary for the delivery. It seemed like just the power went out and there was a light dusting of snow.

Overall the commercials seemed alright, pretty similar to in the past. I’ll look forward to seeing them on repeat in random places for the next few weeks.

This week we are talking about personal projects.

I randomly got very inspired this week during Brit’s color theory class, though I don’t suppose it’s that random considering that class is really delving into creating art and experimenting.

My idea is to create a 3d stippling painting using dowels, (at least) 1″ plywood, color, illustrator, and math. Let me include a photo to help explain.

Basically I’d drill out tons of holes on a grid on a wood panel (painted black in this example) canvas, then fill each hole with a small dowel, and then paint each dowel.

Here’s a detailed list of notes / steps I plan to take to do this. Don’t take this idea please. Just kidding, steal it if you want, IT’S A PERSONAL PROJECT. I’m sick of people monetizing their hobbies. Does anyone do anything for fun anymore?

Process / Tools:

1. Create Digital Mockup
   1. Create Grid
   2. Mask Image on Grid
      1. Decide how wide / narrow pallet is with image trace feature
   3. Decide on Background Color(s)
   4. Fill in each grid component with corresponding color using eyedropper tool
   5. Figure out which colors are used
2. Find paper / paint that will work to match digital mockup
3. Create grid on wood (likely 1” or thicker plywood)
4. Punch where each hole will go
5. Drill out each hole (get equal depth using a “drill bit stop collar”
   1. Skip 3, 4, & 5 and use a CNC if you have access to one. That’ll save so much time.
6. Paint background
7. Get dowels equal size to holes, Cut correct number of dowels to correct number of size
8. Glue dowels into the holes
9. Paint dowels if desired
10. glue paper to dowels or paint dowel tips
11. frame
12. enjoy

I feel like this would be a good experience because it would be fun, It’d be an excuse to buy more tools, I’d get to practice with a bunch of tools that are new and interesting to me (Illustrator, drill bit stop collars, squares, rulers, guides, etc), and I could show off how cool and creative I am.

I think a big skill I’d like to learn with a project like this is using CNC software and hardware. I took a CAD class in high school (roughly 10-11 years ago) and I haven’t used shop equipment like that since. I have worked as a bike mechanic though, so I’m pretty exceptional with tools. Bike mechanics are especially crafty.

For this week’s blog assignment we are talking about past work that we are proud of. I’m specifically going to talk about design work, and a project I did last term in Stephanie’s AR module.

https://youtube.com/shorts/pUiHnSnReSI?feature=share

The project was an augmented reality experience which displayed information tied to a geographical location on translucent panels. My group chose to create guides to Seattle neighborhoods and each of us made a unique augmented reality neighborhood guide for the area that we live in. My guide was for Beacon Hill. The augmented reality experience was associated with a notable landmark in each location, so the idea with mine is that it would appear when you scan a sculpture at Jefferson Park. Each guide contained three panels, a center, left, and right panel. In my guide the center panel was a welcome message including a short informative description about the landmark you just scanned to make the guide appear. The next element was a map which was associated with the information on the other two panels. The left panel gave a short description of Beacon Hill’s history and culture followed by locations and institutions important to the culture in Beacon Hill, this included El Centro de la Raza, the Library, the Beacon Hill Food Forest, and some Street Art. The right panel gave a brief description about entertainment and what a visitor to Beacon Hill may be interested in doing while they are there. Some spots that were included were a sample of restaurants (Che Bogs and Cafetal Quilombo Cafe), a music venue and bar called the Clock Out Lounge, and the Jefferson Park Golf Course.

This project involved learning and practicing many new skills. I learned about some augmented reality software, practiced animation, and integrated designs created in Photoshop. The project also involved collaborating with others to create a uniform presentation of a larger concept that would include a city guide associated with multiple augmented reality experiences.

As a result of the project, I am interested in pursuing further learning and potential work in the extended reality field. I find it to be a very interesting field that has barely been tapped for its potential.