Well, its another blog!! And we are finally getting towards the end of the school year and I couldn’t be more excited! I am so ready for summer because that means I get to go to the beach and go on the boat all the time. I also am excited to finally have a lot of time to hangout with my friends because during the school year it gets hard sometimes. These past few weeks we have been creating our own websites on Adobe Dreamweaver. I hate coding with a passion but I know its gonna be worth it in the end and it’ll look really good. I just have to be patient. Coding can get really confusing because when things go wrong you get really frustrated to try and make it work. In my portfolio of my website I am going to include a lot of my paintings and drawings and I will also include my graphic design. I want to also have a contact page that eventually I can get it to connect to my email so that way people with any questions or special requests can contact me with just the click of a button. I also would like to make a slideshow of my work as part of my background. I want to include a section of awards and other things i’ve done and received like the wake up carolina, the education business summit, and all the other small things i’ve helped out with over my junior year. I will also try and include the awards i’ve won from my base school and not only from AAST. I want to make my websites colors pop so it gets my viewers attention then that way they will need forget about my website and they will keep coming back. Hopefully in the future I can start selling pieces from my website and it can even turn into a store type thing and I can get buyers. I will put some of my works I want to include in my portfolio down below so you can see the types of things that will be on my website.
Spring Break is over so that sucks. I got a lot of sleep over break and got to rest my head some and not have to be going home a lot because of that issue. I also hung out with my friends and had a good time. I worked some too. I got to hangout with my family some which is always good. On Easter, I got to hangout with my family from North Carolina and I haven’t seen them in like two years so it was good seeing them and being able to hangout with them. Coming back to school, was hard because my sleep schedule was very messed up from the break and I want it to be summer already! More importantly, I want it to start getting hotter outside instead of it going back and fourth all the time! The first week back in school, we started dreamweaver Chapters 3 & 4 so I finally got caught up on that. In Adobe Dreamweaver, I learned a lot about organizing the folders and making sure everything goes in the place to connect it to the website. Codeacademy is a lot different than Adobe dreamweaver because its more you creating the website and putting things where they have to be and making sure everything in the website looks and works right. I also started planning my website. I am gonna go with a simple light pink theme and have sections of my portfolio, my about me link, I will talk about art and graphic design and what both of them mean to me. I will include tons of work I have done and put the names of the pieces under each photo. I want to use some simple cute cursive fonts because I don’t want my website to be too busy and overwhelming for viewers. Im really excited to be getting into making my own website and being able to show people what I love to do and being able to put my own work out there.
I wasn’t in school much this week. ive been getting scans and going back and fourth to the doctor to try and figure out what’s wrong. We are still working in dreamweaver and I still find it cool and simple. I am really excited to be starting my own website soon. I’m gonna try my best to make it look super cool and near. TSA is also next week so I have to keep working on everything for that. I’m almost done I just have to get all the papers and everything filled out for the conference. This week I got my B & C art show entry in and i’m pretty happy with it. I’m just hoping it gets into the show. For this show I created a typography piece on photoshop and illustrator. It is a piece that has the word hope located in the flowers. I decided to use the word hope because it’s really pushing me forward in life and I want others to see the same thing. To never lose hope no matter what. I really like the piece so I entered it at the Carolina Forest art show too. We also have been workng on earth day at the bay posters for Ocean Bay Middle School. I created a poster with a mosaic type background and then made an earth. I also put a whale on the side of it to represent the bay since they are Ocean Bay. I went to Ocean Bay Middle so it’s pretty cool to be designing for them now. That’s something I never thought would of happened. I really love designing with all these big businesses and things like that. It’s really cool how they come to us for the things we want done. Third quarter is coming to an end and I wouldn’t say i’m happy with my grades at this point. I’m actually really disappointed in myself. My grades are never bad and this quarter they are. I’m still trying my absolute hardest but some days it’s harder than others with what’s been going on. I’m only really satisfied with my grade in DC. Which is a 103 so that’s the only thing really motivating me in school at this point. 
Another week, and another blog. This blog is really late but i’ve really been struggling with school and honestly it hasn’t been going so good. I’m now 50% home bound which sucks. I’m still trying to be positive and do all my school work on time though. We recently have been working on our HOPE logos and i actually like some of my ideas.
I made 4 different designs for them. One of my favorite ones is the one using red, orange, yellow, and green. These colors just look happy to me and I feel like it would help with the meaning of their company. Another design I made uses the colors blue and purple. I really love these colors together and I think it gives viewers more of an emotional feeling when looking at it. My other two are blue and purple too. I made a circular one, a box type one, and then just two regular ones. I really like the meaning behind this company and what they are trying to provide for the society.
We recently started dreamweaver and i kinda like it. I really like how you can see the live version of your website while you’re coding it and not having to go back and then look for every single mistake. It’s really easy to use too so that’s another good thing about it. I am excited to start making my own website and really start advertising it around for people to see. I would really start like to selling things and making things like logos and posters for people who need designs done!
I took my ACT and I feel kinda okay about it. I’ve never really been one to do so great on big tests but we will see how I did. Hopefully it turns out good. College is right around the corner. I’ll probably do my two years at the tech and then the rest at ccu because I heard their design programs are phenomenal. I was glad to hear that because I live like 5 minutes away from there so it would be a good choice. 
Another week! This week hasn’t been that bad because it was my birthday on Thursday! So it was a good day. This week we finally got into Codecademy! It finally started working and we are getting ready to finish up working with CSS. I really like coding and I am glad I got to refresh my mind with it all and remember what I learned last year with it. They have changed a LOT of things with coding. There are so many weird new tags that they didn’t have last year and I was surprised. I finished my CSS portion of it earlier so that was good too.
For the B & C art show I might put a piece in that I made about two weeks ago but I don’t know if I really like it enough to put it in the show. It has a lot of blue and purples and it is an abstract piece so I don’t know if they would like it or not.
My first thoughts for my first logo is pretty cool. I have a lot of ideas and I don’t know which one I want to go with.
I really want to use a rose on it because roses are my favorite flowers. I don’t know what kind of font I want to do for my name and I don’t know what I want to call my website. I don’t know if I want my logo to have my name on it or not. I am really excited to start working on my logo and eventually make some money!
I have always wanted to start my own business online and make money doing things from that and I think that would be a cool idea. I want to have a section where I put a spot to where people can give me what they want and I could do their designs for them and give them a price and stuff like that. I am hoping to use this website for a long time and after high school still be using it and making money with it.
1. Which Kinetic Typography Video did you like best? What design aspects made you pick this one?
2. Describe the piece you are entering into the Art Fields Show.
3. What are your first impressions of codeacademy.com Learn HTML?
4. What plans do you have for Valentine’s Day for a special someone or for your family members?
This week we got to watch kinetic typography videos! My favorite was Ella’s. I really liked hers a lot and it was a cute type of video. I liked the stars and the other little cute things she added to make move around and do all sorts of cool animations. I went home early Wednesday feeling really bad. Ever since like two months ago I have been getting migraines from looking at the computer so much. I went to the doctor and they gave me migraine pills so we will see how this works. I am going to paint a sunset type picture for Art Fields. I want to add lots of colors and maybe a warming sunset type look in the middle of it and maybe add a big tree to the right of it. I really hope my piece gets in. I have an upcoming art show at cf that I want to enter a few pieces in too so I have a lot to paint at home! But I love painting so its okay! Since code academy hasn’t worked right I haven’t got to experience with it. I already know coding though so thats fine. I really miss coding and hope the website decides to work soon!!! I have all my old flash drives full with my old coding and websites so I will have those to look back on so thats good.
For valentine’s day I don’t really know what I;m doing yet. i think me and my boyfriend will be going to the Olive Garden. That is my favorite restaurant and I haven’t been there in a while so I kinda want to go again. I usually just go to dinner with my family for Valentine’s day but I guess this year it will be different!
Well it’s another week working on our Kinetic Typography Project. Mine is coming along great. I am finally almost done and I am super happy with my final video. I am going to upload it to my youtube channel and hopefully it gets a lot of views. This semester is way harder than last semester. Last semester was fun because of Mr. Decerbo and my double block. This semester, my English class includes a lot of work every night and so does my Chemistry class. Math is going okay. Math has always been my worst subject but Mr. Scott helps a lot. I am happy that I still have DC and i’m happy for that. I am excited to start our coding. I took web design last year and I LOVED it. Coding is one of my favorite things to do. I love to make websites and I am super excited to make one in this class. We are entering two art contests soon and I have been thinking of what to enter in mine. I am gonna paint a pretty sunset type picture and enter that. I don’t know if I should enter paintings in both or if I should enter a chalk piece in one and a painting in another. I haven’t really done a lot of art lately because I have been busy with work from my other classes. I want to start using illustrator more and start making more graphic things. It feels like i haven’t used Adobe photoshop or Adobe Illustrator in so long because I have been so into After Effects. After Effects is my favorite program so far. I really love the things you can do in it. I want to make more lyric animation videos in the near future and start posting them on Youtube. I have always wanted to start a cool youtube channel with lots of videos and cool design videos but I just never had the time to really get into it but I want to start soon. I am hoping to make more things using Adobe After Effects.
Reflect on your first semester grades and accomplishments.
2. What song did you chose for your kinetic typography project and why did you chose it?
3. What cool effects have you discovered/learned in After Effects?
4. Discuss the progress you have made on your project so far?
The end of first semester has ended and now we are onto second. Double block is over and I miss it a lot. Now we only have this class for like an hour and a half and it’s short and boring. This month has gone by so slow. Im just excited for next month. My birthday month! From the beginning of this month till now we have been working on kinetic typography projects! I chose the song ” A different way by Dj Snake Ft. Lauv. I chose this song because I like the beat in it and I thought I could do a lot of different things with this song. I chose to do my project in adobe after effects. I chose this program because it seemed like it had a lot of cool effects you could do to your videos. I really like all the kinds of effects you can put into each and every word. Its crazy how much work it takes for even a short 30 seconds of a video. I have made a lot of progress. I started not knowing much about adobe after effects and then I watched a bunch of youtube tutorials and then I learned a bunch about it. I feel like I know a lot about this program now and I love this program. Adobe after effects is really cool and I would like to keep learning more and more about it. I have downloaded tons of fonts that I like to use throughout my video and I feel like each font is different and they all look super good together. Im usually picky about my fonts but in this type of video I feel like you can use a bunch of different fonts and it still looks really cool because of all the different kinds of movements. So far, the project is going great.
Well this year has gone by super slow it feels like. But its finally over and I am pretty happy with where I am right now. I really am enjoying this class and everything i’ve learned so far. Last night was the AAST open house for rising 10th graders and I think we will get a lot of applications. I talked to many people that were for sure set on this major and were telling me their interests and it matches perfectly to the kind of stuff we do. A lot of them are interested in photography which was cool. Today we have a shortened schedule due to advisory. We are having a holiday performance to celebrate the holidays and show appreciation towards Ms. Jones and all the hard work she has put into our school. I am really excited to see the show!
This week in Adobe Photoshop, we have been finishing out concert poster. We learned how to kern and do many other things with editing texts to make the spacing look perfect and make it all look right. Overall, this poster taught me a few cool things and I liked how we made the background fade with the image. We are currently working on our candy bar wrapper project. I am still set on making mine for my sister. She loves roses just like me so I made the background of the candy bar roses. I also found a really cool font to do on top of it. It was hard deciding on the font because nothing really looked good on top of the flowers I made. But I made it work. I also added my labels and some of the other details to my project. I also added a picture of my sister on it too!
Ms. D asked us who our favorite designer is. My favorite designer is Magdiel Lopez. He is a graphic designer who is absolutely amazing. Every one of his works looks so crazy good and I love every single one of them. He uses such bright and different colors that make all of his art stand out even more and I really like him. This is some of his work.
This week in Adobe Photoshop has been my favorite one yet. We have done more editing and work that I really enjoy. In chapter three Curtis taught us on restoring and colorizing damaged photos. We took this picture of a ballerina that had scratches, missing pieces, tape, and it just looked plain old. It was dark grey and you couldn’t really feel anything when looking at the picture because it looked so old. We took this picture and rotated and straightened it so that way we could start editing it. I really liked learning how to straighten out images because I needed this a long time ago! I have straightened a few of my old pics and now they look much better! After we straightened it, we adjusted the levels in the picture. Using the lasso tool, we filled in missing spots in the picture. This is another tool I wished I knew how to use a long time ago! I really love how you can take a picture that has missing pieces and fill them in to make the picture look like they were never gone in the first place! This works really well with old pictures. After that we also learned how to use the spot healing brush. This tool allows us to paint away image perfections quickly and super easily. After that, we sharpened the image a little bit using the unsharp mask tool. After we edited the black and white image we learned how to colorize it which I thought was really cool. We learned a little about the color modes and the settings of them in photoshop and then we started colorizing. We made a new layer and chose a appropriate brush to work with. I used a soft brush so it was a little more gentle when coloring the image and dint have any harsh lines and was easier to blend. We used the color setting because it looked the most natural in the image. We used the brush tool to color the skin and dress and anything else we wanted to be colored. After all that, we grouped our layers. Grouping layers helped me be organized and neat when working in photoshop. Next, we turned this into a polaroid by putting a border around the image and extending the bottom. Then, we added text to our image and we could pick and choose what font we wanted to match this image. Then we were all done!
On Wednesday, we worked on our own on what we wanted. I decided to explore a little more in Photoshop and Illustrator. I also worked on our upcoming project.
I am super excited to start the candy bar wrapper project. I am gonna create a wrapper for a hershey bar. Im gonna make it for my sisters birthday. So far I am thinking of making one like a willy wonka golden ticket and make the font just like that. I am also thinking of making the background really colorful.
This week I have been reading a bunch of design articles and digging more in depth with illustrator. I also fixed a old picture of my dog for my mom and she loved it1
Below is the picture of the ballerina we fixed!
