The Holidays Are Over Now, And I'm Still Out to Lunch

With another successful Christmas season over and done with, it's time to get back to the grind. For some of you, that means back to school, and for others, it means going back to work. I happen to be lucky enough to be returning to both of those things. The only problem is, I'm not ready.

Unfortunately life doesn't wait up for us to be ready for change, it just happens, and we have to deal with it, or get left behind. For me, that means junk food and video games for one more night before I get back to it all.

In all seriousness though, it's always nice to see the extended family again and enjoy a good family dinner and catch up. With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it's hard to normally make time for family and friends and I'm glad I got the chance to really enjoy plenty of both this year.

After Effect 3D

This video is done in term 3 by using after effect 3D tool.
In this assignment, we have to use
Effective use of lighting
 (I make the lighting slightly follow by the camera, focus on each photo and make surrounding dark),
Animated Cameras(I make the camera angle goes by each one of it, in total I have 3 photos in triangle shape), and creative results. In the end, there is a 3D BCIT text.

I enjoy doing this assignment. I played around with the lighting and camera angle. I feel it is interesting that we can make photos and text in 3D.
There is one thing that I don't like about is when I render it in after effect, it took me almost an hour to make 10 sec video.

My portfolio website

In the end of the term 3, I created the first version of my portfolio website.

For the content, I started with gathering the work pieces, selected 12 best works that I want to show, and then summarized as short sentences of my work. It sounds easy, but it is one of the crucial things and effective way when you start organizing the portfolio works. 

Writing the description of the works helped me a lot to organize my thought as I had to go back the time when I created the specific works, and had to recollect what I was actually thinking at the moment: concept, the purpose of the design etc. And this also will help when I have to give a presentation.

Design of the site

The design is simple and organized to empathize my graphic works. Site structure is also simple, unless users go into the work links, they can simply find the short and sweet descriptions by just scrolling down within the one page. 

Basic contents are ready, I will develop this site more attractive and user-friendly since we will have another portfolio class in term 4 :)

My photo gallery

In term one, Amiee's html class. We have a final project which is design and code a small 4 page static website.
We can choose topics from:pa/Wellness, Restaurant or Café, Photography or Art Gallery, or a Bed & Breakfast/Boutique Hotel, Outdoor Sports Adventure Company website.

I choose photography because during the spare time I like to take pictures, and record every moment in my life to share with my friend and family.
In this website, you are welcome to take any photos without any copy right issues as long as you leave a comment in comment page.

In this project, we need Css Navigation List menu, including image gallery, paragraphs, different headings, tables, lists, images tags.
Apply an external CSS stylesheet to consistently style all text, links etc...
Now I'm going to show you what my site look like.

This is my home page with discretion about this site. 

Next, is my photo gallery.

                                                                   The about page.

                                                                And finally the contact page.
                                                                This is also a comment page, it is linked to my email.

This website is not alive yet, I will make it alive when I fix the part that has problem.

  I hope you enjoy browsing my gallery website.  Thank you.

 

Kitchen Surfing

This was a class project where my Partner and I decided to create a fictional cooking show where we show you how to make delicious pizza. This idea was derived from our passions for food. Since my partner was the head chef and main actor and I was the cooking show host. I was in charge of all the camera work. From shooting stationary shots, to getting different angles, and perspectives of the creation of the pizza. I also was in charge of editing a majority of the footage and making sure all the transitions were good. I chose the music from a royalty free library on the internet, and thought it was quite suitable for the purpose of the show.

This project was a lot of fun to create and really gave me an idea of the complete process of video production. From making sure all the audio levels and mics are working, to lighting, and having a shot list for different perspective was a great way to exercise my production skills.

Coffee Shop Flyer and Loyalty Card

Having to opportunity to design a flyer and loyalty card was exciting as I was able to use a variety of design skills.

For the flyer I decided that instead of just providing a simple menu I could use buildings with text on to portray the products available at the store.

The contrast from black and white to colour makes the company logo stand out.

On the flip side I used photographic images of some of the delicious food and drink you can buy with the intention of drawing in customers. The color scheme is kept constant with the previous poster and logo.

Everyone likes a loyalty card. A simple and to the point message of a free cup of coffee comes across effectively with the use of a stamp based loyalty system.

Creating a range of designs for different purposes for a particular brand was a thrill and shows my versatility and creativity whilst realizing the importance of maintaining a brand identity.

Hosting Your Website on GitHub for FREE

A lot of people know GitHub as a place where you can share your code with the community. But did you know GitHub also lets you host websites for FREE?

There are two kinds of websites you can host with GitHub, Project Pages and User Pages. Project Pages are for individual repositories you have on GitHub and User Pages are for your entire GitHub account. In this article I will cover Project Pages.

To create a Project Page all you need to do is create a branch on GitHub named gh-pages and anything that you push to that branch will appear on www.github.io (the GitHub Pages domain).

Pretty simple, here's how to do it step by step:

1. Create a gh-pages branch

Open Terminal and go to your local project repository. 

Type  git checkout -b gh-pages
 
2. Push gh-pages up to github.io

Type  git push origin gh-pages

3. Wait up to 30 minutes...

Go to [username].github.io/[respositoryname] to see your site.

For example, my GitHub username is af19 and I have repository called typetool. So, the URL is af19.github.io/typetool

And that's that.  

One limitation of GitHub Pages is that you can't have any server-side stuff on there. That means no Ruby, PHP, Python, etc. So just HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

The creative process behind this animation.

The creative Process behind this Charge Rabbit Animation.

Charge Rabbit is a Shopify App that can be used to sell subscriptions right from your shopify store.  This app was built by my friend and he needed a video describing the app for his splash page in the shopify store. 

I consulted him on the features of the app to make sure to include all of the important information a user would want.  

I summarized his notes into a simple script and brainstormed the visuals that would allow people to understand exactly what this app does:  It connects Shopify with the subscription power of Stripe, which is a tool that allows business to accept and manage online payments. 

Connecting things, linking two apps together, that wouldn't otherwise be used together..the missing link.. puzzle pieces! 

So puzzle pieces became my characters, and illustrator and after effects became my new closest companions. I recorded the script, created all the necessary elements in illustrator and then brought them into After Effects for animation. 

Drop Dead-lines

Drop Dead-lines

Missed the post for last week... which ends up being a perfect segue into this(last) week's topic: Deadlines

Everyone endures deadlines. Whether it's with school, work, your taxes, even library books have them, but following them perfectly, that's a whole other story. We all miss the occasional one, and usually it's not a big deal; but what about those rare times when it is a big deal? 


Step 1: Own up to it.

No one cares about the miraculous chain of events that occurred, causing you to hand in your work late. Excuses sound like just that: Excuses. Own up to your error. Admitting your own mistakes will be a far better representation of character than any crazy situation you were involved in.


Step 2: Fix It.

Take the necessary steps to complete/submit the project. Whether it's asking for additional time, skipping other engagements, or pulling all-nighters, you need to finish and submit the project quickly. 


Step 3: Plan more effectively.

Take more time in the future when planning your schedule. Whether it's being more realistic with your time-estimates, taking on less work, or sacrificing your social life, your schedule is everything. A hectic schedule is far more prone to missed deadlines than an organized one. If you haven't already, try employing the calendar trick mentioned back in blog #2.


At the end of the day, procrastination is a punk and being able to hit deadlines will either make you or break you in the creative industry. No one hires anyone who, 60% of the time, delivers on time. 


—tom

Coffee Shop Branding Project

Branding project includes logo, poster, flyer, royalty card and web design.This is done in term 2.
The concept of coffee shop is “MUSTACHE CAFE” which offers organic coffee and also retro modern atmosphere. Design is simple and flat but also using subtle grain texture conveys the cafe’s atmosphere. To make it friendly design and to avoid being a just macho design, there are rounded corner strokes and feminine patterns and elements such as a ribbon and a crown. On the other hand, the website design is slightly different from the print design, using a lot of photos to show the café’s professional coffee and their specials.