Makeover Tutorial #1 - Modifying Nose

Before

After - used the pinch tool, very simple

Pattern and Logo - Choco Monkey

This is the logo for my made up company Choco Monkey. It's in the original color, and then black for any kind of printing it would be in without color. It's also smaller in both colors, to show it is still recognizable when small. I'm very glad with how it turned out, after many failed attempts at creating it in Illustrator. My first one looked like a mouse. The second one like Winnie the Pooh. But this one looks like a monkey!

This is the seamless pattern I have created from scratch in Illustrator. I started out making a pattern with lots of weird circle shapes, but just as trying to make the monkey for my logo, it looked pretty bad. I completely scrapped the circle idea and changed it to a more symmetrical, square pattern design.

Final Exam

The very first, preliminary part of the pattern before being messed with to become a scatter pattern. The background is black to see the pattern, otherwise you wouldn't be able to because it is white. 

The background pattern, which I made snow. This was made by using the one small circle and turning it into a scatter brush, randomizing everything. After that I randomly changed the circles to have different opacity, and blurs.

This is my final product of my Christmas Card for the Final Exam. The live trace for the wreath was a little time consuming, to remove the background but it turned out well. I like the snowy theme I went with, making most things shades of blue as the ideal Christmas scenery is. The tree took a large amount of time as well, and became frustrating with how jagged and awkward it looked sometimes, but I fixed it as best I could. In this project I used scatter brushes a lot, art brushes, gradients, effects such as roughen and Gaussian blur, Extrude and Bevel for 3D, live trace, type on a path, and typography. I made the holly berries and small bulbs by hand. The presents and larger ornaments were things I made in earlier tutorials. I used this tutorial for the Christmas tree shape:
http://ndesign-studio.com/tutorials/christmas-tree
This final was a little stressful with the time restriction because I usually spend large amounts of time making sure it looks just right, but I feel I did exceptionally well under the time given.

Presents

This was probably the hardest and most time-consuming tutorial I've ever had to follow in this class. Many times certain things were left out in the tutorial so I would have to fill in the holes with what I thought would work best. It also took many times to get the boxes themselves right because one wrong move when making it 3D, including putting wrapping paper on wrong, and I would have to start over. I ended up starting completely over about 4 times. Also, some things in the tutorial were a little sloppy in which I decided to not follow exactly and embezzle my own touch on these holiday presents. Even though it was a rush to finish on the last day, I am proud of how it turned out with all the extra time I spent working on it. I even brought it to my house a few days to work on. Regardless of the difficulty, I liked to make it because of the fact that I had to do most of it on my own.

Yummy Strawberry

A strawberry created by following a tutorial. The hardest part would have to be the chocolate and shading, which all had to be drawn with the pencil tool. Not having a steady, or artistic, hand to create the shapes was a hindrance to making this strawberry. I had to make many sketches and outlines before having one that would work well enough. I do like how the light reflections were used to give it more of a 3D look to it. The leaves were also something new, using a leaf brush I made was fun and required a few tries as well.

Holiday Bulb

The holiday bulb as followed by the tutorial. The hardest part was getting the 3D bulb to look right, and the background pattern with gradient. Other than that it was fairly straight-forward and fun to make.

This is the same thing with my own text added at the bottom because I thought it would fit well.

Dirty Water

Dirty water made from a tutorial. This was a lot of fun to make, especially with how glossy and "clean" it turned out! The hardest part was all the intersecting and pathfinder tools to create the shadow and lighting effects, but they were easier once I got the hang of it. I liked using all the gradients in this tutorial because it made the drop look like it was collecting and refracting light, and I'm really happy with how it looks! Hoping for more fun tutorials like this!

This is the close up of the face as asked for by Mrs. Klein. This is to show the detail around the eyes and mouth.

Pattern creation in Illustrator

This pattern was created in Illustrator based on one brush. I  rotated and reflected the pattern until it looked good as one square. I then made it a swash, filled the rectangle with that swash, and scaled the pattern down.

Foundation Logo

Variations for the logo for Foundations, incorporating the letters CIA to stand for Character, Integrity, and Accountability.

Business Card

This is my business card for my Graphic Design business. The cubes were added on the background for a slight sense of movement, and also filler space for the card.

My Logos - Ideas

These are a few variations of ideas for my Graphic Design company logo. I'm leaning towards the one in the center, but the two on the left look appealing as well. If you have any feedback please let me know in the comments, they would be greatly appreciated in which ones you like and why.

In the end I picked this as my final logo. Reasons behind this were it's simplicity yet emphasis on architectural structure. One of the things I wanted the logo to say was how precise it was, and this is a very sturdy logo. The red also captures attention and stands out, and the logo is still legible when scaled down. Being still effective at gray scale is also a priority, which it is.

Just For Fun: Safari Icon

In my spare time I followed a tutorial on recreating the Safari logo, because it looked cool. I really like how it turned out! The hardest part was using a triangle pattern for the tick marks around the inside to line up and be just the right number, but through trial-and-error and messing with scaling, I got them to line up perfectly!

Extra Logo Creation - IM Icon

This is the Instant Messenger-type icon, creating in Illustrator, following a tutorial. It was pretty fun to make, and I'm happy with how they turned out! This was done while waiting to get my personal logo packet back, to give more experience in creating logos.

Mesh Lyrics

This is my mesh artwork with lyrics based on a tutorial. The lyrics I used are from a song called Turning Tables by Adele, and I picked a font to match what the lyrics were, which was graceful and elegant. But that's all on the surface, as the font along with light blue colors of magestic-ness and peace represent, along with the smooth wave the first line is. But as it gets deeper the colors get darker, and there are more contortions and imperfections leading to the red color of anger. These lyrics are peaceful on the surface, but have a fire of bad feelings raging under the words themselves.

Memorable Logo Creation

This was made following a tutorial for creative logo making. The hardest part was definitely getting objects to go together with each other, and having them being hidden at certain places such as the a hiding under the z. Or getting the r to go through the o, but over the next a. It was accomplished however, through creating more things such as white objects and very heavy use of changing things around in the layers panel.

Jack O Lantern

My pumpkin created in Adobe Illustrator, to fit the current holiday!  This pumpkin turned out to be one of the hardest projects yet, with many new tools, layer manipulating, and right plain things the computer doesn't like to cooperate about. If I had to narrow it down, I must say the hardest part was the pumpkin body along with it's shading and highlights. To get them to work you had to change the opacity and blending modes of almost everything, which was troublesome when I had to put my pumpkin in front of a background, because it's blending mode was set to be semi-transparent. This was fixed by saving the pumpkin by itself as a GIF and placing the picture of it on top of another Illustrator file, the background. The background was fun to make, using a linear gradient and a return to the symbol sprayer and manipulators. I'm happy with the way it turned out, and that I was able to finish it on time!

Flower in vase

This is a flower inside a 3D-looking vase created in Adobe Illustrator. The flower itself was easy, using the pen tool and gradients. The vase was made by making half of it with the pen tool, then in effects selecting 3D rotation and adding two light sources. Then a flower symbol I created was used as a map art on the surface of the vase.

Personal Expression Project

My personal expression project I spent a large amount of time on.
Explanation: The type face was mainly a playful one, representing the type of person I am. This picture shows a change in my characteristics through time, with some of the basic words that describe me on the right, progressing to the more unique side of me on the left, my characteristics that set me apart more from others. The color gradient compliments this change as well, from the plain, basic, pure white to yellow, a color which represents joy and excitement. The pattern on the gradient also changes, from the normal square, into a square with rounded edges, all the way into the unique circle. The picture of me playing the trumpet and the word coming out of it is large because I feel as if it represents a big part of my life at the time. Playing music has brought out some of the great qualities I posses now.

Type of a path

This section was all about typing on created paths. The ones of my name were changed through the Type on a Path Options,  such as effect, path alignment, flipping, and spacing. The Pillow pet one is typed on two different circle paths, created around the dolphin. My name in rainbow was distorted through creating a rectangle around it, then selecting them both for an envelope distort. I was then able to change each corner.

Live Trace Tutorial

This is my final product after following the Live Trace tutorial in Adobe Illustrator. This tutorial was harder than  most others before, and used lots of new tools and skills. The hardest part was probably manipulated the gradient blue circle, and the transparent boxes with in, they didn't want to cooperate part of the time. The font used in the tutorial was not on our computers either, so I used a grungy-enough text for "snowboard". The blue and green swooshes were also a little awkward-looking at the curves, but I was able to smooth them out. It was a lot of work to make, but the more work put in, the greater the outcome is!