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Overall, I found this course personally enriching and one of the most enjoyable courses in Semester One. The course introduced to me new methods of communicating my creative processes, whether it be through the use of the industry standard techniques of Engineering Drawing and AutoCAD to the more creatively open Adobe Photoshop. In addition to teaching new skills, this course built up on my already standing skills, allowing me to continually express myself as a designer and an artist.

What went well / what did I have difficulty with?

I found majority of the drawing exercises straightforward, on the flipside the exercises involving heavy engineering based tasks such as measuring the object with calipers or abiding by the ISO standard I found particularly challenging.

What did I enjoy / dislike?

I did enjoy the wide range of methods of communication presented to me and to realise I had them at my disposal has me optimistic about how I could communicate my ideas to others. Specifically, I enjoyed Project 2 the most. Having to render the Shocktrooper helmet was both challenging and enriching; by which I was learning new techniques on Photoshop (a program I am aiming to learn to use more) and I was kept interested by the subject matter. In terms of dislikes, I don’t explicitly dislike anything; I just took them as a challenge to build upon and improve.

What would I do differently if I had my time again?

I would most definitely ask for more help and start things earlier. These two little things would improve my grades in certain projects and allow me to learn much more than I did this time around (not saying I didn’t learn anything though)

What were some of the key things I learnt, or insights which I developed?

It’s best to slow down, assess the situation and think of a rational thing to do in the face of a obstacle.

Asking for help is vital.

What led to those experiences or insights?

Both these insights were realised in Week 6 and 7’s Photoshop render of a Hair Dryer. The program’s stubbornness to not work the way it was intended to caused me to stop, reassess what is happening and figure out what to do from there. In the case of the Hair Dryer this happened twice, in class and at home. The first time saw a new method in pathing understood and the second saw the collection of what was learnt and leaving it as it is.

Final remarks

In whole, I thoroughly enjoyed this subject and perhaps a little bit sad for it to end. I would like to thank Rob, Will and Max for guiding myself and the class through the class in a kind, friendly and at certain points informal way to which I’m sure has helped everyone in the course gain a new skill or solidify upon what they already know. I know I have, and I thank you.

Fig 1.- Capping the semester off Shore(trooper) of my reflections

Week 8 saw work done on Project 2, by which the class was instructed to find a product and render it on Photoshop. Myself wanting to inject a bit of myself into my work did not take long deciding what to render and opted for the Anovos Imperial Shocktrooper Helmet rather than the usual kitchen appliances. This would be in reference to my interest in Star Wars and the interesting livery of the helmet itself.

Fig 1. - The product itself from official promotional material

Plan of Attack

Before starting on the render, I took to Pinterest looking at ways in which I could present the helmet, looking at various industrial illustrations of helmets and other related material to finalise my planning. I ultimately decided on a two view orthogonal projection of the front and side angles of the helmet. This I felt was the most appropriate method of communicating the helmet’s most prominent details, landing on a front view and a right side view.

Kitting out

Once planning had finished, it was now time to begin rendering. Luckily enough I actually own this helmet, thus positioning and photography of the helmet relatively straightforward before I arrived to the tracing stage and subsequent scanning into the digital realm.

Fig 2. -The traced sketches of the helmet

Pathfinding and a Fresh Coat of Paint

Once scanned, thus began the bulk of the rendering project. As practices and realised the week prior, the method of creating paths and masks is time consuming, owing to my inexperience with this particular method of colouring. In retrospect however, this temporary struggle significantly accelerated the process of creating as opposed to the “manual” method of filling in with the paintbrush. As such it is a valuable technique I will take away from this exercise.

Fig 3. - Clearing the Path….

Fig 4. and 5. - Filling in the areas of red, black and blue

Weathering the Bucket

Adding the appropriate shading to the helmet was interesting, it was neither too hard to pull off but at the same time still remained a challenge. It was replicating the glossy effect of the PVC Plastic used to construct the helmet that was deemed the most testing part of the project, this however was achieved with the help of a few of my classmates, who instructed me to play around with the opacity levels of not only the paintbrush, but also the eraser. This trick in turn enabled me to create that glossy surface I desired, along with aiding the way in which shading was to be done.

In terms of style, I adopted a more artistic painterly technique to rendering. This as such is more in line to my usual drawing style. Consequently, this creates consistency across my work and further develops my artistic style as a designer.

Fig 6. - Weathering continues…

Debriefing

Overall, I found this the most enjoyable project to working in Communications thus far. It tested my abilities within Photoshop in an enjoyable manner and also taught me a couple new techniques that I will be referring back to later on in my design career. Indeed the mere fact that I was able to render a Stormtrooper helmet added to my enjoyment within the project but it goes without saying this project had taught me skills that are invaluable to my future as a designer, allowing me to develop my artistic style that would make me and my work unique to the others.

Fig 7. - The Shocktrooper helmet ready to help quash a rebel uprising

Week 6 and 7’s Photoshop render of a hairdryer certainly presented itself as the most difficult exercise in the entire course, from my own personal perspective anyway. Even with Rob’s instructions this particular exercise became difficult to follow, up to the point in which I needed to just stop and move on. There are lessons to learn from this however, both for myself and in Photoshop.

Fig 1. - Colour balancing and image fixing … The calm before the storm

The exercise itself began fairly straightforward, with myself finding the image adjustment, colour balancing and layer structuring steps fairly familiar to work with but that’s where my familiarity with Photoshop ended. This exercise required the creation of paths and corresponding masks to specific parts of the hair dryer, this being a completely new venture into Photoshop I took the challenge and attempted to do such creating the paths and as such linking them to their respective masks.

However, the task of creating paths took longer than anticipated, for myself and my desk partner. In recollection there were two methods of pathing tried. The first where rather than creating an outline for the image and subtracting from there I dove in head first, creating outlines to parts using up numerous anchor points, neglecting the “Use as less points as possible” tip given to us by Rob. This inefficient first method ate up much of my time allotted to us by Rob, slowing us down to a halt before asking for help.

Thankfully with advice given to both my desk partner and I by Maddie, a second method of pathing was put into place. Involving the placement of anchors at strategic spots and not really worrying about accuracy the first time round we we able to have our paths done.

Fig 2. -  A method done much quicker than the first….

And then class ended. Much of my frustration occured post class, with attempts and achieving the colour to mask failing for an unknown reason. Prompting me to leave the hair dryer as it was and collect what I had learnt from this exercise.

First of all I now have experience pathing and masking - It may not have worked perfectly here but with more practice it will work properly

Secondly, slow down and check my work - Perhaps rushing into it may have caused my misfortune

The penultimate week for this subject was saw the use of photography made around the University campus. These as such we made to capture the essence of the Uni, done through 4 set criteria and two of our own free choice.

Week 10 involved the start of Project 3 “Bare Bones” , measuring techniques and model making techniques. This week I found testing, much owing to the interesting challenge of measuring the dimensions of a kettle.

Fig 1. The Kettle…

Words of the Day

“Datem” - A piece of information

“Parallax Error” - Parallax error occurs when the measurement of an object's length is more or less than the true length because of your eye being positioned at an angle to the measurement markings.

“Interpolation” - The insertion of something of a different nature into something else.

Measuring Up

Spline tool

Multiple variants of the spline tool

‘Set tangent direction’ - Use to control tangent point to make curves appear smoother

Modelling

For more detailed objects card is preferred; Foamcore is for more solid objects

Cutting curves - Straight lines then tangents

Overall i like communication, it thought me a lot about how to display your like a professional, and also tech drawing are also important, and don’t forget AutoCAD, even though i think it’s really hard to use but in this industry if you want to do any thing thats related to making something something that’s not 2D then you have to know how to use it, and unfortunately i’m still not that good at it so need to work harder for sure. All the tech drawing needs lots of time to be perfected and gets to the industry’s standard, you won’t just suddenly know how to do everything, that’s why i think i need try more.

As for the model making this is also very important and photography since these two is a really good and simple way to display my ideas.

This week we need to take some photo and do a little edit to it just try to make it look good, we should be using photo taken in uni but i have some photo that really want to share so i’m gonna use it anyway.

As for the editing, i know i should be using Photoshop as a professional but since i’m writing this blog on the go on my phone so the only thing i can do is editing with an app, so, sorry.

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Conclusion

Refraction

I’m not that in to photography but i still enjoy doing it and as Rob saids in the lecture photograph is a very good way to communicate with other as a designer since it can be so direct.

As for my work show above, all i did is adjust the brightness, contrast, warmth and blur part of the image, i think this is just some basic stuff.

In this week’s class we are doing something call perspective drawing, this is basically 3D orthogonal drawing i think, our task is to draw a Wassily armchair, but first we have a exercise to begin with.

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This is the exercise we have in order to let us understand what perspective drawing is all about.

This is my drawing.

Conclusion

Problem