Video Project

Hello Everyone!

I wanted to take the opportunity to post my video project for people to see! My class wanted to engage each other with short one to two minute videos about ourselves, sharing accomplishments, hobbies, goals, and the like. For my own, I used Adobe Premiere Pro to tackle my passions, my goals, my experiences, and more with photos and videos thrown in for good measure!

There were issues with rendering roughly halfway through the video that could not be fixed at the present time, but this is a work in progress. The work can still be seen, however.

I Hope You Enjoy!
Allen

Holiday Card

 Hello Everyone!

     Our Digital Media class recently decided to create cards to sell, the proceeds of which would go to a local charity of our choosing and our college's Art Department. For my own, I wanted to do something for Christmas that would be funny, but not too inappropriate. It should be something designed to sell and make people smile.
     For my design, I went with a classic Santa design inspired by many I saw online. I decided to go with a New Year's resolution joke and food joke in one since Santa loves cookies, you know. I used the paint brush at a size of 125 for the beard with flecks of brown for the cookie crumbs. I then created his nose with an ellipse tool and the band of his hat with a rounded rectangle. I drew the decoration on his hat and his eyes easily before finally finishing with the ellipse tool for the cookie. I wanted the text to be "Christmas-y" so used green text in a Blackadder ITC style.

I Hope You Enjoy It!

Happy Holidays!
Allen

Elmore the Cool Blues Cat

Hello All!

     My Digital Media class very recently engaged in creating logos for our college's own Cadillac Daddy Cafe. When one of these designs was picked, we were also told to create a "blues cat" mascot for the cafe. For my own, I looked both to iconic cat character designs such as Felix the Cat, Sylvester from Looney Tunes, and Garfield as well as blues cat designs I saw across the internet.
     For this particular design, I call him Elmore the Cool Blues Cat, I followed Aaron's basic design idea of using a colored outline. For a bluesy feel, I made his outline blue, gave him a cool hat in the same vain as the Blues Brothers, and have him lining up against the car in his design. Due to a strange issue with his image, I was unable to add my own design to his. His design shows up splotchy on my computer and in the downloaded image file. My main goal with Elmore was to create a design that both followed Aaron's original vision as well as to create a character that looks timeless.

I hope you like him!
Allen

Hello Everyone!

     The Digital Media class I'm enrolled in recently engaged in using the MIT App Inventor program. Our goal was to learn this easy-to-use program within our class's length. MIT definitely out-did themselves with this program. It was fast and relatively easy to use. Not only this, but it was also fun.
     In terms of apps, our class did not go very in-depth, opting to create an app where we could tap the screen to create messages and also allow a small ball to bounce across the screen. Tapping the ball would make it bounce in another direction. It was simple, but a great start to bigger things. I was easily able to download the companion app on my smartphone to see the fruits of my progress in real time, something that I was very impressed with. Overall, while not an official creation method most app-makers may use, this was a fantastic beginning in the art of app-creation and I highly suggest anyone that is interested to check it out.

Thank You!
Allen

Hello Everyone!

I wanted to share my design for my college's small cafe, Cadillac Daddy Cafe! I wanted to go with a mixed 1950s-inspired style as well as take on a small jazz influence.

For this, I wanted a cool black background to accentuate the blue and give it a jazzy feel. I created lines for a banner, reminiscent of several 1950s logos with two white circles to give off the appearance of car head lights. The Cadillac part of the sign was done in AR Christy while the other texts were done in AR Berkeley. I accentuated the Cadillac part of the design in half of an ellipse to add to the sign design. For a more authentic feel, I added the establishment year.

Let me know what you feel. Thank You!

Allen McGraw

Hello Everyone!

     Recently, my class decided to create flyers for whatever business they chose. For my purposes, I chose a local restaurant situated in Hinton, West Virginia known as "The Market". I have enjoyed eating there for many years and they immediately popped into mind.
     For this project, I used Photoshop, gathered up the necessary images both from the website of the business and the wooden background from Creative Commons. I put all of these images into Adobe Bridge, loaded them up as layers, and assembled them over the background. I added the text for the address, phone number, email address, and their slogan of "Eat! Shop! Enjoy!" to the bottom. These are placed over black rectangle and an orange rectangle for visual flair, the same with the oval-esque shape behind the title. Then I arranged the food in a tantalizing collage format to show off their variety.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve, please let me know!

Thank You!
Allen

Hello Everyone!

     Recently, my class endeavored to make three-dimensional models using an excellent website called TinkerCad. For the class, we were to make models that we could print using a 3D printer. Very fun! I decided to make a Pokeball from the hit video game series Pokemon. Besides this, however, the process of making this model was both fun and educational.
       I used two half-spheres, making one red and a white one, which would be slightly smaller than the other. Taking a black tube, which was smaller than both half-spheres, I placed it in between both spheres. I made another tube to use as a black tube at the front of the ball inside the sphere for the black inside the indentations on the ball. Inside this were two white tubes to fit inside, one to hold the release button and the smaller as a release button for the trainer to release their Pokemon! I'm very pleased with the end result! Please take a look and let me know how I can improve!

Here is my TinkerCade account:
 https://www.tinkercad.com/users/fSpyMm98pmt-mcgraws
Or you can search for "mcgraws"

Thank You!
Allen

Hello, Everyone!

Today, our class worked on CAD or Computer Aided Design. The online website tinkercad.com was the method of choice today and it worked quite well. I was actually extremely impressed with the depth of it and the ease of use. The following pictures are just a few of the projects the website taught me how to do.

The first photo shows that I successfully learned how to duplicate shapes, make holes, etc.

 This second photo shows that I created my own name tag key chain that I can print out.

This was a lot of fun and fulfilling! I'm excited to use the program again!

Basic Globorial Test Game

http://mycode.globaloria.com/xroxkdmd

Mind you, this was me messing around for just a few minutes, but I was able to change a few things.

I have a history with coding as I dabbled in it my freshman year of college. Mostly, this was in Game Maker Language as I felt I would want to be a Computer Science major. While I decided against this, I still have an active interest in the art.

Dabbling into it again, I relearned what functions are, for example. Or the basic setup for a line in JavaScript. Very interesting.

At some point soon, I will be going back into Globorial to make a full-length game for fun since this one came out short. When I have time to dedicate to this, it can be an actual game! Yay!

Juxtaposition Assignment:

Hello, everyone!

For this juxtaposition assignment, we were to collect two images that commonly do not fit together and clash them together for some interesting reason. In this case, it was not for comedic purposes, but to juxtapose two separate issues:
1) The commonly held belief that humans are not actual animals.
2) To show just how fragile the line between our civilized society and the more instinctual one of "lesser" animals is. In other words, to show how our society (not taking evolution into account) has made us the beings we are and how easy it is for a human to be savage.

This idea was inspired by the Pink Floyd record Animals.

Face Trace Assignment:

      For this assignment, I opened up Adobe Illustrator and decided my model for this would be the one and only Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden. This is for a myriad of reasons, but he is simply one of my favorite vocalists in one of my favorite bands. Apart from this, he is a very interesting person.
     Aside from using Illustrator and picking my image, I used the brush tool to outline Dickinson. To fill in those lines, I frequented the dropper tool to sample the colors from the actual photograph to paint my version with the brush tool. This was a very fun assignment!

15 September, 2016

Hello Everyone!

Over the past week, an assignment my class had was to make a personal logo. Heavily inspired by a previous logo design I had done, this one almost made itself in conception. I immediately thought of the old Commodore computers logo and, looking at the design, I think of old NES cartridges as well. Pretty neat! Let me know what you think.

Thanks!
Allen

September 8, 2016

Hey, Everyone!

     Over the past week, I did some work on text manipulation in class. Our goal was to make three completely different illustrations of our initials. Mine being S.A.M., I went to work by accessing Photoshop (Thank you, Adobe) and utilizing the Layers tab to change the layer style of different sets of initials.
      The bottom set that you see was made by using a smooth bevel and emboss layer, having a static-like texture over the characters, having a thick yellow stroke around the lettering, and a drop shadow to permeate around the perimeter of the text. The text itself was manipulated with the warp tool for a fish-eye affect.
     The top left one that you see has a wavy contour and smooth bevel and emboss to it. As well, the text has been warped.It has an outside black stroke to make t pop out, an orange inner glow, and a blue color overlay.
     Finally, our top right set of initials have been beveled and embossed as well with a diagonal contour, has a dark inner shadow, has a red color overlay, and a deep overhead drop shadow. The text has not been warped.
     For a small project to acquaint myself with Photoshop text tools, I feel happy with the small amount of progress!

Thanks for listening and have a great day!