Seventh Quarter - The End Is Near

This quarter, I must say, was quite frustrating.
Though I did get some stuff done that I like, I had to deal with some, well, mostly one, annoying person who made it very difficult to collaborate. Needless to say, I will not share that project here.
So let's start with a couple of project I particularly enjoyed working on in my Portfolio Development class, which was actually Award Submission class.
First, the Hotel Indigo project, where you were supposed to choose a hotel location and create images - either photographs or illustrations - that highlight the neighborhood of that location. I chose the Lijiang, China location and focused on a dominant minority culture there, the Naxi. This is the only culture that has a living pictogram language. And its art is influenced by Tibetan styles. So this is what I made:

These are three of the statues found in the Garden of the Gods near Lijiang

The messages on the statues invite hotel guests to drink tea (in the tea ceremony room), enjoy the local food, as well as the wonderful sights

The illustrations in context

I also worked on a promotional for Morrissey next to latest album World Peace Is None Of Your Business (his latest album only came out after I started working on this): Tarot cards whose back side says pretty much the title of the album, and the fronts are referred to specific songs from the album:

Back side

Kiss Me a Lot

World Peace Is None Of Your Business

The Bullfighter Dies

Next, an animation I made for a milk that is easy to digest by many people who consider themselves lactose intolerant. It is based on a testimonial of one of their customers, who claimed that before a2 Milk, she suffered from bloated belly (and unbuttoned trousers). So my animation tells the story of her trousers' button and his longing for his buttonhole, who is kept far away from him by the bloatedness.

I made another video for a different class, Gaming Concepts, where we had to create a campaign for Xbox One, so we decided to make it into some sort of recruitment game, where Xbox is calling all its gamers to up their cross-platform gaming so that they can "fight" against PlayStation. The campaign culminates in a huge rally where the Xbox leader announces the challenge to PlayStation. Anyway, the video was fun to work on, though very difficult and time-consuming with the music and all.

Finally, had to make a business card and a portrait of myself for the website:

the back of my business card

Well, now I must prepare myself for the last quarter... It's going to be tough!

Sixth Quarter Round Up

In about 6 months I will be done with school, which is when the scary part starts - finding a job! I hope something will work out. Until then, I will keep working on my portfolio and my work-searching skills.

This quarter was very different from previous ones, mostly because I did not take it in Atlanta, but in the New York school, where they focus more on advertising and less on design.
The main difference, for me, was that I had to work in groups for some of my classes. This wasn't easy, mostly due to time conflicts. And we had to work on campaigns.

For Pop Culture Engineering, we had to work on two campaigns - a different trio-team for each - one for SoundCloud, and the other for Bacardi. We got briefs, did our research, found some insight about our target audience, and developed a campaign based on all that info.

Since SoundCloud likes to emphasize its role in helping people discover new music, and people seek new ways of discovering music that they like, we decided to employ science and developed a campaign tour of a mobile MRI machine and an algorithm that used brain scans to come up with favorite music for each scanned individual. Introducing:

 

 

Owners of scanned brains get their playlist digitally, which they can share on SoundCloud, as well order their playlist's vinyl record:

This was rendered by a fellow student, Alessandra D.

Once the tour is over, the idea is that the accumulation of scans and favored music can be again entered into a new algorithm that will help people more accurately find new music they like.

For Bacardi, our goal was to get people excited about music and drinks outside of festival season (apparently, Bacardi has its own music festivals in the summer!). So we launched a campaign that revolves around the disappearance of the Bacardi Bat. Here I will only share the animation I made:

And a poster rendering:

I used a photo I took of a bus stop right outside my apartment building.

For A Brand Called You, we instead had to create a very personal project. After much deliberation and misunderstandings, we all finally decided that I will create a book about my service in the Israeli army.

I decided to create it as a comic strip, because I served in the Gaza Strip. Haha. Also, comic strips are a good medium for the humorous content. In addition to the comic strip, each page contained a background image that was related to the story and some post-hoc thoughts about the events told in the story.

The book is supposed to look like a Manila envelope.

 Some process photos:

Some inside images:

I had two other classes, but one - of them - Head to Head - involves entering competitions, and our projects are not done yet. They will be ready by the end of next quarter. The other - Short Cutz - is for video editing. I prepared 3 anti-littering campaign videos that kind of work on reverse psychology, calling people to litter. However, I still need to work on them, so maybe I will share them at some later time, when I am more pleased with them. Actually, I am quite pleased with them, but I still need to tinker with the music and text animations.
Anyway, that's all for now. I now have just two more days, before my 7th quarter starts, to work on a project I started years ago and is still in progress. It's huge, but it's finally getting somewhere, I hope.

Old Men and Other Stuff

A few months ago Hanna and I decided on a challenge: draw one old man. We were supposed to do it in a week, but instead it took a little longer. Oh well!
Here are my two old men:

The middle one is based on a photo.

Since our challenge, I've been posting all my artwork (which has increased in volume, if not in quality) on Instagram. I try to post something everyday, and you can find it here. Below are some examples, first from the Inktober challenge from October, and then from my made-up Black & White Animals challenge for November:

Also, since that challenge, I moved to New York City. It's a great place to live! I love the fact that pedestrians rule here, and not cars. Although cars do make a lot of noise. I love the fact that I can walk everywhere, and indeed, I spend lots of time walking as my main and preferred commute method. I guess on average I walk at least 10 miles every day. Also, while walking, I can try various eats, which is also a favorite activity of mine :)

Moving to NYC also means changing schools. While I still plan to graduate from Portfolio Center, I do my studies in the final three quarters at the NYC location of Miami Ad School (of which Portfolio Center is part). This school, though focused only on advertising (they only have Art Direction and Copywriting as majors) does offer some neat opportunities, such as submitting art work to a pop-up gallery whose purpose is to promote a certain alcoholic drink. The drink is red, and so the idea is that you can see one image with you naked eye, and a completely different image when you look at the same piece of art with red glasses. Here's the work I submitted, displayed on a wall in that gallery:

My art is on the wall! It's one of my watercolor birds, duplicated 4 times.

And this is through the red glasses, though it's hard to fit the glasses on a tablet's camera lens. It's a photo of my friend's dog.

People were looking at my art!

 Better get back to doing some homework, because later I plan to go and see how the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloons get inflated :)

Illustration Friday: Jazz

For some reason, I am a little obsessed lately with fish. Not sure why, but my little sketchbook already has 5 of them. Anyway, what would be better to play the saxophone than a fish?

End of Fifth Quarter

This quarter was so much fun! I really enjoyed all my teachers and learned a bunch. I feel like I'm finally getting what design is. Especially with type, which is where I've been struggling.

First, my favorite project from Content Creation class, Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster: a campaign for a fictional brand (from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) that is used to promote Barnes & Noble's NOOK and latest, 40th anniversary edition of the book. The drink, though alcoholic in the book, is made out of non-alcoholic ingredients and can be purchased at the Barnes & Noble's Starbucks stores in either cans or as Gargle Blasterccino.

The Beverage

The Starbucks poster

The poster in its environment

The new book cover

The Gargle Blaster ad on Barnes & Noble's webpage

What you get when you click on the ad

Next project is the one for Systems Design, where I revisited a project from first quarter, which not many people do... It is very different now, though: Raju's Tree. This is a branding system for a Disney Adventureland drop-tower ride. But it's more than just a ride, it's a whole experience that aims to empower tween girls to try new things and find new capabilities within themselves.

Cut-paper ride poster, this time in color and done digitally

t-shirt you can get at the gift shop

Ride webpage on Disney's website

Second photo in the slideshow on the webpage

When you scroll down you get the details

A pamphlet you get at the entrance to the ride

with a map of activities while you wait

more merch - learn to play the flute

Bullet-journal type book you can also get at the gift shop - front cover

One of the inside spreads

For Type 3 we had to create a campaign to promote some underrepresented/misrepresented group of our choice. I chose Down syndrome, particularly addressing parents (or parents-to-be) to children who have just been diagnosed with the syndrome. The purpose of the campaign is to show these parents the brighter sides of having a child with Down syndrome, as explained by families with Down syndrome members.

 

Finally, in Video Storytelling I learned how to create and edit videos in Premier Pro, which is very useful. Here's a link to a playlist of some of the videos I created:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2mXcnet6cVLOH-L3SAzEDShL1zwbObyc

I'm not all that pleased with the videos and animations, but I see it as a learning process. One cannot create great things without starting with crappy ones.