Just a few videos I enjoyed:

#1- Color

#2- Beauty Kit

#3- PIGS

#3 is probably my favorite. Great work.

Yeah this was cute.

Ten Thousand Pictures of You from Robin King on Vimeo.

CDF | Colormark

I only magaged to get a few pictures before my camera died.
This was our final day in CDF, and we went to Colormark. I was really cool seeing how they create all different prints. They do a lot of local pieces like Sprint and random busniess around KC. Very neat expericence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VISCOM | Taxonomy Redo

My first taxonomy was in desperate need of change. After brainstorming and coming down to a solid plan, I created an entirely new taxonomy. I have to say I am much more pleased with my final piece. I am proud to say I created a much more creative and complete piece.
Originally I had wanted to create a taxonomy that related to nature, but not parallel to my haiku animation. My first taxonomy was much too simple and was not fully thought out.
My final taxonomy molded into a journal of field notes. I created narrative of a nameless person hiking/researching in state of Wisconsin at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. Throughout the handwritten notes the writer documents their findings and shows the denotative and connotative concepts. The small brown booklet is being written in a journal like narrative, complete with the writer's doodles and thoughts. Along with their doodles includes samples collected from the research and diagram drawings.
The entire book has a handmade scrapbooky feeling to it and would be considered a personal belonging:

Cover

Inside Title Page

Entry with layered transparency 

Entry without transparency

Wheat artifact

Wheat artifact closeup

Entry

Entry

Entry closeup

VISCOM | Final Project | Part B

Line #1 using woven wheat

Line #2 using leaves

 

Line #3 using leaves

tool(s) > mark(s) > pencil sketch(es) > analog shape(s) > digital translation(s) > composed w/haiku text 

After completing all three projects I have noticed their parallel of progression. Honestly I did not understand the importance of so many iterations of the dot compositions. I slowly began to understand the importance of the progression when we began the line juxtapositions. It was important to reiterate your first try's when deciding on the correct juxtaposition for the environmental line study.

Throughout these projects I have learned to think "outside the box", and not to act only on my first idea. Most of the time it isn't the best idea. Which goes hand in hand with progression. Just like reiterating dot compositions, retaking pictures of juxtapositions, and revising symbols; when one doesnt succeed in their first try, they should try a different approach. And not go with their first idea.

When the spring semester rolls around I will remember that craft is just about the best thing you can master, mini crits from your peers are always a wonderful idea, and that without a well throughout idea, your piece will not hit it's greatest potential.

These are my first drawings of my haiku. The first two lines are my iterations for my first line ("Wind-blown rained on") As you can see I was looking WAY too much into the poem. There are pictures of rocks, which I was trying to show that the rain and wind had created erosion in the rocks.

I now can see that the pictures were much too  literal. I believe I wasn't thinking abstract enough. I have been working on my progression and plan to continue to think more abstractly.

CDF | Final Post

 We have been working on a group project between the sections, creating a calendar. This calendar uses our delineated 3D letter forms and our color notions. The months were given a specific color concept and they were assigned to a person in the group. We also divided out jobs like color group and graph layout to insure accuracy and equal cooperation.

My month was March and my concept was transparency. I had a difficult time with this concept at first, due to the fact that my 3D letter form had to appear transparent. I used both subtractive and additive transparency concepts from one side of the form to the other. I really enjoy my color pallet and I think it goes very well with the month of March.

I am excited to see the final piece completed.

VISCOM | Final Haiku

Haiku from Loren Cook on Vimeo.

Music: Breathe Me by Sia (instrumental)

VISCOM | Final Project

 Above is my final storyboard on my flash haiku animation. At first I was having a difficult time transitioning from this simple storyboard to Flash. But quickly managed to produce a short but pleasant piece.

 

 The sequence above is the creating of my 3rd line symbol of "You make me, narrow path indeed".

Which describes the path one makes as they walk among grass. My object was a mass of plastic grass. I chose this material because my haiku deals with grass. I explored/created my marks with India ink, and mostly slapping or dragging the blades along the paper. These created almost teardrop shapes which also resembled grass shapes. My shape sketch iterations were shaky at first, but I finally created a symbol resembling blades of grass descending back, making a path. After scanning the symbol into Illustrator in I vectored the lines and imported into Flash. The transitioning of this object emphasized the creation of a path by breaking the symbols into two separate pieces. The two pieces entered the frame from opposites side and simultaneously met in the middle. I believe this forces the viewer to focus on the middle where the narrowest part of the joining objects.

Music: Breathe Me by Sia (instrumental)

Taxonomy

Though our taxonomy did not have to relate to our haiku in any way, I decided to stay with the nature theme. I stuck with a simple binding and light brown, semi textured paper. I also used white labels (which I dyed) for the text, giving it a more homemade feel.

When classifying my marks into denotative and connotative I also tried to stick with a simplistic layout, using a spread to spread approach. For each object I snapped a shot of the mark-maker, which is the denotative. On the fallowing spread, four marks made by the mark-maker were placed evenly about the pages, labeling them with my connotative words.

 

Cover

 

 Table of Contents

 

 1st denotative

 

 Close-up of label

 

 1st connotative

 

 2nd denotative

 

 2nd connotative

 

 3rd denotative

 

 Close-up of label

 

 3rd connotative

4th denotative

4th connotative

CDF

Above is my progress with the leaf assignment using pantone colors. I have my colors for the color aid  picked out, ready to be placed in the section between the leaf and the pantone color structure.

But of course after several tries of color correction, the CMYK color is still off. I believe my color aid pieces are much more accurate then my pantone color print off.

I will continue to achieve this color correcting.

VISCOM | Storyboard

This is my final layout for my animation. I have finished my "rough daft" of the entire animation. I still have a bit of things to tweak. The timing is difficult for me. I have been having a hard time getting all the shapes to animate the the correct times, though I am getting much better at Flash.

I want a slow song for my animation, and have been going through my itunes and websites searching for the perfect tune. which I haven't found yet.

CDF: Delineation Studies

Line

 

Shape

 

Tone

Texture

Type Iterations for 2nd line: "bent barley grass"

(One of my first type iteration)

This is the font I plan to use. Bernhard Modern Std. I choose this one because it resembled the grass. I am going to also use this positioning, at the base of the blades of grass.

(One of my first type iterations)

I plan to scale done the font from the first picture. This one was also another iteration. I do not plan on using the font though. I believe the first font is much more effective and relates well. But I think the first picture's font is too big. Scaling down would be a possibility.

Ta Da!

I think this is my final iteration. I may move the type down slightly. But overall I believe this is my best iteration and will be used for my second line which reads "bent barley grass"

Final Web Designs

 

These are my two final layouts for web design. I really like the top one. I like the alignment on the right side.  I still think the monogram is awkward. I have had trouble my monogram from day 1. It's so blocky and has such an odd positive shape.