Website and Drawing

So my plan is to create a website for my graphic design portfolio.

They say the hardest part is starting, and I have all of these ideas but am struggling to begin… so a large part of me believes that theory.

I want to build my illustration skills up before I start uploading my work. Illustration I think is an area I could definitely get into, however, I need to learn to draw from not only a photo, but from my mind as well.

Space is a major factor as well, and currently I don;t have much. I should head into uni after work and just put my head down and draw while listening to music with giant head phones. TOTALLY HOT!!

I get excited about drawing celebrities, and think I can be OK at it sometimes… I need to be better… practise practise practise!!

I will upload some more images soon. and will get my butt into gear regarding this website.

Graphic design work, here I come!! you wait and see… I’ll venture out into the unknown world and create an awesome path for myself!! I’ll make it!!

Creative designing

Images that could be classed as negative, but are just creatively designed.

STONEFEST CASSANDRA WEBSITE

So I FINALLY have My WEBSITE up and running. I chose to design the Stonefest website, originating from last years website, using their images and text, and altering it in my own style and design. I have uploaded the website using the free web host “000webhost”. I used Filezilla to upload my FTP. My website is at http://www.stonefestcassandra.host56.com/. I have had a lot of stress getting this website up and running, so I am proud to say that it is uploaded and out there for people to view. Through this experience, I have learnt a lot about web design, and have become encouraged to create my own website in the holidays - as an online portfolio of my work. I think I will take a completely different approach as to what I did for stonefest. I kept stonefest as a simple layout and design, something easily read and easy to navigate your way through. With my portfolio website, I’m thinking of making the index page very busy. Only time and effort will tell if this idea will work out for the best.

SEMI-PERMANENT

I went to Semi Permanent when it came to sydney this year in April and it was such an eye opening experience. There were so many inspiring people giving speeches - letting us delve into their work and understand how and why they are the people they are today. There were a huge amount of people at this function, many of whom have different disciplines to each other - some intertwining with multiple disciplines, while others are interested in the one field.I knew a few people who went to the lectures, however if you didn’t have a mobile phone with you - good luck at finding your friends. Here is proof of only a dample example of the majority of people who attended this spectacular event.

I enjoyed both days immensely. One of my favourite speakers was the very first guest speaker… who was very nervous at first, but got so comfortable within the hour of his speech that he ended up running overtime. The genius is

Timba Smits!

Timba is a very down to earth kind of guy, wants you to be involved as much as you can - is a nitty gritty perfectionist with absolutely awesome talent! He’s not afraid to share what he is thinking, or what he has accomplished. However, he did mention that he doesn’t like showing off his work while he is still working on it - something I can completely understand. Timba is extremely dedicated to his work - infact he spent days creating his own type for his own magazine called “Wooden Toy”. The type was in the shape of branches, which took many hours to produce just one letter. I was fascinated!

Timba went through stories of how he got to where he is today - which in my opinion is very successful. He has commented on spending many long nights in front of the computer, sometimes not sleeping for days. Something inwhich takes dedication on its own, for a one time thing - let alone doing it on multiple occassions. He even went into detail telling us about the time that his studio got broken into, he showed us an image of his fridge and how all of the coke cans had dissappeared overnight, while the flvoured water still sat in exactly the same position - something which wouldn’t keep them awake to finish their deadlines. Timba tried to get us involved in his life through him telling his stories and vocalising it the way he did. He wasn’t afraid to swaer - and oddly enough, when he did swear, it was in the appropriate places and never failed to make people laugh. All of his work is inspirational, everything down to the last page of his magazine. I purchased his recent magazine while I was at Semi=Permanent - even though I had never heard of him. His work was so inspirational that I needed to take something home with me that could inspire me with hopefully something that looked so astounding like his works. Out of the many artists, designers, illustrators etc I found Timba one of the greatest. He would be up in the top 3, probably my second favourite, possibly first. It was a pretty close call… Everyone had so much to offer us, but I was able to link myself to Timba - understand where he was coming from - take things away from his speech that I could use in my works in the future. He taught me to take things from an image and use them in the text as a graphical element, such as the texture of someones skin, or the fabric from their clothing, and incorporate it into the type or as a backdrop or a small image on the page somewhere. The way he does it comes so naturally to him, although I believe it would have taken him years to master the knowledge he currently has today. The other three people I really enjoyed listening to, having their wisdom shone down onto me was Daniela Federici, Vernon Wilbert, and Scott Dadich.

Daniela Federici

is a photographer who first started out in melbourne at a small newspaper firm and ended up at vogue, and within two years had moved to New York for better and much brighter things. She showed us her photographic images - whom she has worked with many famous people such as Angelina Jolie, Delta Goodrem, Anna Nicole Smith, Brad Pitt, Celine Dion, Ryan Phillipe and the list goes on and on. Such work includes these images:

Daniela’s images are strong, her life has been so impressive, and I am thrilled, honoured and intriegued that I got the chance to listen to her speak, listen to her views, listen to her life story and how she bacme to be the person she is, the person she aspired to be!

Vernon Wilbert

also gave a very inspirational speech.

Vernon Wilbert has created the introduction to ‘Six Feet Under’ , along with the introduction to the film ‘The Invasion’.Vernon had me intrigued as soon as I heard he had worke don the fil ‘The Invasion’ because I had only watched the movie the night before. It was so strange, I have the largest movie collection at home, and i decided to watch a film that someone in the lectures had an impact on. I took it as a sign - a sign that I knew he was such an inspiration - an awesome human being! Vernon created the commercial for “gears of war 2”. For me, this isn’t something I would generally be interested in, but somehow I found myself compelled to his story telling. What I found interesting when I got home from the lectures was that my brothers had his game - something I wouldn’t have noticed without his help… and now I am going to take much more care in what I see - for I think I was loosing out on so much with not realising the briliance of the creation of the game. I feel sorry that I wasn’t familiar with his work, but i’ve made a pact with myself to follow his work. To open my mind up to things I wouldn’t normally look into. Going to Semi-permanent was one of the greatest things I have done in my graphic design course, and I’m so grateful I got the chance to do so.

Scott Dadich

is the last person I’m going to talk about, and most likely will be brief. Scott Dadich owns his own magazine also, titled ‘Wired’. It is an excellent magazine, not only focusing on design and artistic creations, but also has things involving the world and what its up to. One issue of ‘Wired’ even had the chef Martha Stewart - in which she baked a massive sized Wii cake… Scott said it tasted delicious!! hehehe Scott has created his ouwn typeface which took hiom over a year to design. He originally created a typeface and then realised someone else had already created it. This happened to him twice. Now he has his own typeface, with a magnitude of different settings such as spaces, height, kerning etc. Something which would take a long while to do, a lot of patience, brains and good will :-) All in all, I highly encourage you to go to semi permanent if you have the opportunity!! It is

AWESOME!!!

Web Design

So it turns out that web design is quite an involved thing to learn. There is so many different aspects that you can take on board. Currently I have written my HTML of the stonefest website, and will be taking a crack at the CSS over the holidays - possibly and hopefully finalsing it. (However knowing me, I will probably ge stressed out due to the lack of knowledge. hehe) I need to catch up on the reading… and had downloaded the lecture, (it takes 40 mins on my computer… such a slow process) but when there was only ten mins to go, it conked out… so I will have to redownload that onc again.

I am very grateful for these holidays, have been working very hard this term. Will be doing the same in the holidays also, however can have a little bit of rest in between. Ive also cut back on my shifts at work, hoping that will de-stress me a little. hehe.

so here it goes, two weeks or catching up on the CSS and reading. Let’s do it!