Blog Reflection

In my Capstone project, creativity is essential in creating a design. It is not just about coming up with an idea, but also creating a message within a design while still making it pleasing to the eye. Throughout my design class, I am constantly thinking of new ideas for the projects that will be creative and shows my skills. I am always debating with myself whether it is a good idea or not, but I will never know until I try it out.
In one of my projects, I was to work with other two people. Right from the start, I knew it will be difficult because I am not an outgoing person and neither one of my group mate. We had to work out our communication throughout the project and had to collaborate ideas and in creating the project. The group project was a disaster. I may not be an outgoing person, but that doesn't mean I don’t put effort in my work. I get along with other people in that class, but I can’t seem to work with my group and the fact that I was basically doing almost all the work. I knew it was not a good thing to do all the work, but in my mind, I wanted to get over with it. I don’t want anymore stalling with it.

Throughout the project, I encountered new experiences that made me grow as a person. I have new friends who are more experienced than me and I can ask advice because they can relate to me at some point. I really learned to manage my time better because of my hectic schedule to go to classes and to do my work. Not only did I learn better time management, I also learned elements and principles that goes into a design. The importance of color, contrast, depth, perspective and etc. I also learned to critique my fellow classmates' works for improvement or if their messages were conveyed.

I had a couple of challenges but want stood out the most was probably the problem I faced with my group project. I cannot believe how someone can be two hours late when it is also their project we need to work on. Another problem was managing my time since I had two AP classes, the essays and my night class every Tuesday and Thursday. I first had to adjust because there was really a lot on my plate. I wasn't planning to fail either of my AP classes. In the end, I managed to regulate my schedule and get my work done while still going to the class and getting good grades.

Stereotype Took over Me

It has been five years since the day I arrived here. For the first couple of years, I was trying to fit in; to survive until I can go back again, but things change. I am a part now and am torn between going back and staying. I miss that place, but I do not want to stay there for a long time. I do not want to be left out and not fit in again. That is like doing what I did five years ago all over again and I still remember how unpleasant that experience.

It was dusk, and the sky was dark orange waiting for the darkness to fully takeover. It was gloomy and silent. The only noise I can hear was the car’s engine, the loud yet somewhat mute in my ear traffic outside, and my sister’s muffled sobbing. It was surreal. I was lost.

“What is happening?” I thought to myself looking at the surroundings I passed by. I was trying to memorize it before I leave and I do not know when I was coming back at all. “I don’t wanna go” was all my inside emotions trying to say and I continued to think, “Not in a place where I am not a part of.”

Then there I was in SFO airport and in South San Francisco. It was a totally different place and way different from what I expected and lived at. The roads were wider and cleaner. I thought to myself, “This place… is better.”

When my mother announced that I will be starting school, I was, for lack of any better word, scared. I was scared. I only knew about American schools from movies, and from what impression I got, I did not want to go. There will be cliques or groups that isolate themselves from other groups, there will be bullies, and there will be, of course, loners. On my first day, I pushed the entrance doors and all I saw was people, doors, and lockers and I knew for sure that I was scared. I was scared to not to fit in.

All of the American movies I watched that gave me an impression on how American schools work were all bull. Yes, there are groups and cliques, but they are natural and somewhat necessary. Bullies were just rebels or stupid kids that tried to get attention, and loners just needed their… space? Overall, the stereotypes of American movies were all lies, but they surely did make me paranoid and I had let it eat me.

For the first few months of school, I would talk to some people, but I never really hang out with them or even considered them as my friends because I felt that they did not consider me one anyway and I was unimportant. I tried avoiding talking to people, because I thought they will pick on me. I was a loner. I remember sitting on the top of the stairs watching all the kids eat around the cafeteria with their own cliques. I did not want that to happen, but it did because of the fear stereotypes marked on me.

It may have taken quite some time for me to adjust and have what I call friends, but I did eventually. It is better late than never and I blame stereotype that took over me.

Graphic Design Week of Jan. 28 - Feb. 3

Rather than my previous design, I decided to change the project again. The second iteration of this Collage project is due Feb. 5 and this is the final outcome that is still yet to be critiqued:

I used the sword from the anime Sword Art Online to be the frame of the project, which can also represent the use of swords in a lot of anime and that many anime is action genre. The map of Japan and the Hand somewhat represents Yin Yang between full action anime and romance anime. The background of the whole project consisted Night Sky, a Galaxy and cherry blossoms. Night sky and the galaxy represent alternate universe of most anime while the cherry blossom is somewhat a popular tree that Japan is known for and is usually used in most anime.

Total Hours of Work: 11

Total Hours with Design 101 Class + Work: 26

Graphic Design Week of Jan 21 - 27

On January 21, I continued my project collage by adding more pictures and editing out parts that didn't fit. My end product is:

On January 24, my Design 101 class looked at all the collages and made comments on each other's works. Not all were given feedback, but as for my project, many stated that it is good, but it needed more direction and message. The collage is supposed to have a message of the interest or culture we were doing, which I didn't do on my first iteration of the collage. As a result, I redid my project but with the same interest.

The message that I'm trying to get across is that Japanese Animations usually start off as a Manga, or Japanese comic. Since it is Japanese Animation, I used the map of Japan and inside are Japanese mangas, which means that's what Animes are made up or they're the backbone. Then on the outside, the map of Japan is surrounded by Animes. The hand represents drawing the mangas, which was suggested by one of my classmates in the Design class.

The work is still on the process but here's the outcome so far:

I want to make the map of Japan stand out more and probably rearrange some of the animes.

Total Hours of Work: 8
Total Hours with Design 101 Class + Work: 17

Graphic Design Week of Jan 14 - 20

On January 17, I received the topic for my first project in my Design 101 class. The topic is either what interests me or a culture. The project is due next Thursday, January 24. For this project, I decided to do either Starbucks, or Japanese Animation. In the end, I chose Japanese Animation as my project topic. The project requires 11" x 14" paper without any white or blank space and must talk about the culture without any letter or number.

I began my project by gathering pictures online. I used mainstream Japanese Animes, such as Naruto, Bleach, Death Note and etc, to show how Japanese Animes are not only popular in Japan, but also around the globe. I started to put the pictures together last Saturday. I had problems with the corners of the pictures and placing them together. I had to cut parts of a picture and adjust different layers. At some pictures, I cropped the whole background and only included the main character(s) of the Anime. As I added more pictures, more and more adjustments were made and I'm only halfway done through this project as of January 20.

Total Hours: 4

Graphic Design Week of Jan 7 - 13

As a person who knows and uses Photoshop, I do not know how to create complex or better designs and barely know how the tools work. To start off, I watched a Youtube video called Photoshop CS4 Tutorial: Create a Colorful Aurura Effect. Out of all Youtube tutorials, this tutorial caught my interest because it uses different effects that I have not tried before. I had problems with the burn and dodge tool and I had to go back over and over again to try and have a better floating image as shown in the image below.

The outcome of my first tutorial video is:

The next tutorial video I watched and tried to do was inspired by the Final project last semester, which asked to make a Macbeth promotional poster. The name of the video is Make a Shattered Dagger Poster: Photoshop Tutorial. Rather using the idea of Macbeth, however, I used my favorite artist, Kim Jaejoong. Cutting the dagger into shards took a lot of patience considering that if the shapes of the shards are too similar, it won't look as convincing as it would be. 

Here's the result of my second tutorial:

After that, I decided to learn on how to use Curves by watching Curves :: Photoshop Tutorial Learn the Power of Curves! on Youtube. It didn't take long to figure out how the Curve tool works though trial and error is a must.

Here is the before and after of an Image I used for the tutorial:

Total Hours: 2

Google Advanced Research

Today we practiced how to research using search operators to narrow down results. This is to help for any research paper that we will be doing in the future, such as the Capstone Research  Paper. To start of, we were given a question from the teacher and then, of course, we typed the question. The question was "How do the democratic and republican positions differ on fiscal cliff?" To begin narrowing the results, I first used the quotation marks on the word "fiscal cliff" to narrow down the results, which gave me a result of 7,090,000. I then added a tilde before differ, but sadly, still got 2,9100,000 results. I was determined to narrow the results as much as possible so I looked for different ways to narrow it down.
I then began using the advanced search and decided to only include results from the United States and in English. I continued to experiment on what search operators to use along with the search tools provided by Google. Eventually, I decided to type " Republican and Democratic 'positions on fiscal cliff' -video" with the same advanced search that eliminates videos on any website result, and got only 6 results. To narrow it further, I decided to add "-opinion" to remove any opinions about the topic. In the end, I got up to only 5 results. It is necessary to narrow down results, but the results must answer, or related to your topic or research question.