This critique required us to assess five main points:

1. How interview choices were influenced by Ready Player One.
2. How interview choices were influenced by the StoryCorps project.
3. Why we chose the interview subject and topic and how we conducted the interview.
4. How technical tools (recording, editing) influenced final product.
5. If public domain or creative commons sounds were used to supplement the interview, explain what they are and provide a link to each file.

My interview choices were influenced by Ready Player One in that I chose a technological approach to my interviewee, my mom. I chose to ask her about the tech or media that influenced her life as a different generation. Ready Player One is all about old technology so my interview fit well with the theme.

In terms of the StoryCorps video, I conducted my interview much like the little boy did in his interview. He asked an initial, rather broad question, and then narrowed it down as he let the interviewee talk. I think this is a good way to conduct a casual interview such as this one because it allows the question to flow and change as the person talks.

I chose my mom as my interview subject because I knew she would do a good job explaining the technology that influenced her generation. She is good at talking and detailing and I was able to incorporate a lot of both in my interview. I conducted the interview by first asking her the project thesis, in which we were required to ask about how a different generation experienced technology differently than I do. I then narrowed down some questions as my mom answered. It ended up being about twenty minutes that I edited down to five and a half.

I chose Audacity to edit with because I was already familiar with it from other projects I completed in high school. It is free, easy to work with and simple. I did not need too powerful tools to complete the project so Audacity sufficed just fine.

I used a simple, ten second intro rift from http://s3.accelerated-ideas.com/FreeMusicTracks/mp3/ARTS/SkyLine_C024(cr).mp3 to fill in the background of my brief introduction to the project.

This critique required us to assess five main points:

1. How interview choices were influenced by Ready Player One.
2. How interview choices were influenced by the StoryCorps project.
3. Why they chose the interview subject and topic and how they conducted the interview.
4. How technical tools (recording, editing) influenced final product.
5. If public domain or creative commons sounds were used to supplement the interview, explain what they are and provide a link to each file.

Link to Olivia’s draft: https://soundcloud.com/user-214171295/rought-draft-audio-story

I chose to analyze Olivia’s project. I can tell her project was influenced partly by Ready Player One in a few ways. Olivia asks her mom about the biggest pieces of technology she grew up with, and a big part of Ready Player One was the discussion of old tech throughout the book. Throughout the story, Parzival never misses a chance to talk about the technology he encountered from the past decades. Another source of influence from Ready Player One that I can hear Olivia referring to is when she asks her mother about video games, and she replies by talking about the arcade and games like Pac-Man. The novel itself was based on a giant, virtual video game known as the OASIS, so that fit well.

Olivia drew her interview choices also from the StoryCorps project in which she asked her mom a series of questions about her mom’s experience growing up. The StoryCorps project is all about finding more about the interviewee’s life and that’s just what Olivia did by asking her questions about her childhood.

She conducted her interview by asking her subject a series of questions about the technology in her life as she grew up. She started by asking some broad questions and then asked some more specific ones as she spent more time with the subject.

I can see she posted her project to SoundCloud online. I am not quite certain how she recorded it however.

So far I have not heard any outsourced sounds, but maybe there will be some in her final draft of the project.

This critique required us to assess four main points:

1. Why their final web portfolio design is clear, well-organized, easy to navigate and use
2. Why the aesthetic design choices of their final web portfolio are well-suited to the content they are presenting
3. How the class readings apply to the website
4. How WordPress’s templates and content management system influenced their creative process and design decisions

Link to critiqued website: https://crimsonpages.org/alexa-mckune/

Alexa’s website has a simple, easy to look at color scheme, a straight forward navigation menu, and a search bar in case the user wants to find something quickly. The simple colors are easy on the eye and there is no ambiguity where anything on the website is – it is clear and the font is simple. It is well suited to the content she is presenting in this way as well. The goal of the project partly required graceful navigation, which her website delivers. She has some artsy pictures of her own work on her home page, which is a good addition to draw the viewer to look at more of the website. It is easier for the viewer to gather what the website is about through media, namely pictures, than a long paragraph describing what it is.

She makes good use of hierarchy all over her website. For example, her headers have bigger, bolder fonts that are easy to see. Her body paragraph text is smaller and unbolded so the viewer does not confuse anything with a title. She used nice, large pictures on her website. I like how her website palette is gray and white, simple, yet she has big, colorful pictures for her media – it is a nice contrast.

I can see she changed her menus and obviously added all of her own work and media. She also included a search bar which is neat. WordPress makes it quite easy to edit every aspect of the website. Her template decision meshes nicely with her colorful media.

This critique required us to assess four main points:

1. How their avatar fits into the virtual world of the OASIS from Ready Player One
2. Why they feel the drawing style used to depict their avatar is appropriate.
3. Why their graphic design and typography choices make their poster design clear and engaging
4. How specific Illustrator tools and techniques influenced their creative process

I chose to do Hannah’s project. Her character wields a sword and shield, and she appears to be wearing some sort of armor. So, I assume her avatar is some sort of warrior in the OASIS, possibly a participant in the Easter Egg hunt. Hannah is still developing her character’s backstory so more of her history is still open to debate. Personally, I think the drawing style used to depict the character is done great. It’s a bit cartoony, which fits well with the setting of Ready Player One, in which the characters are heavily influenced by their activity in the OASIS world, where you can look like whatever you want – and that includes cartoony. Cartoony depictions of characters in video games is also incredibly common. Many popular video games are drawn in an animated sort of style, which Hannah’s drawing fits right into. Font is not yet present in Hannah’s poster. Hopefully, she will add some interesting font later that cleverly describes why her sword, shield and outfit are important. But her layout is clear in which she distinctly separates her avatar’s weapons, the sword and shield, from her body to show them more visibly off to the viewer. They are not hidden behind the character or ambiguous in any way. The character is clearly at the top of the list in terms of hierarchy, with her weapons second, as they are smaller and less blaring to the viewer. I like her use of color; her black armor matches any color she would wish to pair it with. I also like that her avatar’s blue eyes contrast with the warm colors of her weapons and boots. I can see that Hannah used a variety of tools and colors in Illustrator. She clearly used some sort of pen or brush tool to draw the outline of her character. Perhaps she used the blob brush or some sort of fill to color in her lines. I can see a lot of use of the gradient tool, especially on the yellow and red designs of her armor, sword, shield, and boots. It looks as if she implemented some sort of stamp or template to create the little star designs on her boots and shield. Or, she could have used any shape tool to carve out the star object and copy it to other parts of her avatar. Overall it looks as if she experimented quite a bit with the many tools of Adobe Illustrator.

For the class, every student wrote a critique of a fellow classmate’s work. They were assigned a week before the actual project was due, so we could all get some feedback on our work.

This critique required us to assess three main points:

1. How assigned class readings on design informed their compositional strategy and choice of imagery
2. How they hope the final image describes, references, or evokes dystopia or utopia, or 1980s culture and technology
3. How specific Photoshop tools and techniques influenced their creative process

I chose to do Joslyn’s work. Joslyn took a creative approach to her project – she used the background of a postcard, and used the images she collected online as makeshift postcard stamps. She has a variety of sizes of images (stamps) on her postcard. This creates interesting contrast for her project. For example, her scanned image of tissue paper is quite big, while her Rubix cube image is much smaller. Her card also has a lot of depth to it. She stacks the stamps, putting some on top of others. She seemingly splits the card in half, using the faint midline as her guide. But they aren’t halved to the point of being boring – it is a good source of balance in the work. It is boring when a piece of work has the focus slapped right in the middle of the page – using varying sizes and shapes of objects keeps the work interesting, which Joslyn does well on. The little Pac Man at the edges of the post card creates a sort of border to bring it all together, adding unity to the work.

Joslyn touches heavily on the 80’s/pop culture aspect of the project. Her stamps are old school, some of which include a Led Zeppelin logo, a Rubix Cube, an old camera, Michael Jackson’s signature – all relics from a different, older time. This also makes it a great collage. She uses lots of images to make a whole new work. However, the work does not have much to do with the dystopia/utopia characteristic of the project requirements. I believe it would be wise to incorporate something of the like, some sort of stamp that would fit with that requirement. Or perhaps the postcard could be dystopian/utopian themed. Overall, I absolutely love this idea and Joslyn is doing a great job.

I wrote a critique for my own website and the powers of WordPress. It addresses four points:

1. Why my final web portfolio design is clear, well-organized, easy to navigate and use
2. Why the aesthetic design choices of my final web portfolio are well-suited to the content I am presenting
3. How our class readings apply to the website
4. How WordPress’s templates and content management system influenced my creative process and design decisions

My final web portfolio has a nice, matching color scheme. The header photo is a simple, abstract design that reflects the creative necessity required to be in a DTC class. The photo has a Creative Commons License. It matches the footer, title, and menu colors. My navigation bar consists of four simple buttons that also match the header photo. They are brief, and the user should be able to easily decipher what kind of content he will look at when he explores the buttons. Since this is an art class, it makes sense for my colors and pictures to match. It is also located at the top of the website, so it is easy to remember where it is and how to find it.

My website draws from our readings in a variety of ways. It is important to match color, which I have done by editing my CSS file directly. Also, I make use of the different headers offered in WordPress. Titles and headers are in a larger font than the body of my website page, creating hierarchy.

WordPress made it simple to get right into editing my website. I have no prior experience with web design, and with a little tinkering and exploring WordPress’ functions, I am quite pleased with how my website turned out. It is easy and intuitive to make new pages, menu buttons, add media, and edit text. However, I did have to learn a little CSS to get the right color scheme and change my font, which I could not find how to do in the visual side of WordPress. I enjoyed the trial and error that came with messing with the CSS file. WordPress makes it easy to see your changes right away and backtrack if necessary, as it keeps track of all saved pushes to the site. Reminded me of GitHub, which I am fluent with.

This critique required us to assess four main points:

1. How our avatar fits into the virtual world of the OASIS from Ready Player One
2. Why we feel the drawing style used to depict our avatar is appropriate.
3. Why our graphic design and typography choices make our poster design clear and engaging
4. How specific Illustrator tools and techniques influenced your creative process

Take a look at the poster here!

My character, screenname “SopieSuds”, retains the same appearance and traits in the OASIS as she does in real life. She is logged into the OASIS mostly to go to school and earn a degree to hopefully make her and her impoverished family’s life at home better. She also takes advantage of the OASIS in which she carries around a high-tech tablet she would otherwise have no access to, which she uses for all her school activities as well as recreationally, and she also generates many trendy outfits for herself. She wears tattered, old clothes in real life but always loved fashion and trendsetting. SopieSuds is a longtime friend of Parzival, both in the OASIS and out. The two grew up in a harsh reality together, and in the OASIS she provides him a kind ear and an unconditional friendship. She is very close with her father, hence her username, as it came from her mispronunciation of “Sophie” as “Sopie” when she was little, and the nickname stuck with her dad. She’s a bright girl with kind eyes, and just wants to make her world a better place.

My drawing style is my own. I make a good artist outside of class, so I applied that to this project. I used a realistic approach, in which everything is proportional and humanoid, but also a bit of a cartoony style, such as keeping outlines and omitting certain details that may make the drawing more realistic. Video games in the last couple of decades have depicted both highly cartoony and startlingly realistic characters, so my character fits right in.

My type choices are simple yet effective. They are easy to follow and easy on the eye, and brief yet detailed. Each text box offers a bit of backstory and insight into SopieSuds’ abilities and traits. All the different colors and font sizes I used builds hierarchy in my poster. The titles of each piece of text are color coded based on what the text is describing, and located close to that trait or object. The mini-titles are bigger and more colorful than the smaller text that it describes. I also included a small paragraph on the bottom left summarizing a bit of SopieSuds’ life. I made the font blue to separate it from the text boxes. Her name is in big, blue and white letters on the bottom right, blaring and easy to see. I used MS WordArt to create the title.

I used quite a plethora of Illustrator tools. The one I used the most was the Blob brush, which allows the user to paint one single object that can be modified later. I used this for all my coloring and shading. This tool made it very easy to follow where all the objects in my poster were. I also used the regular paintbrush for the outline of my character and certain little details. I used a variety of different brushes and brush sizes as well. I used the gradient tool in her hair, sweater, pants, and tablet to add a little extra dimensionality to her, and put a blue and white gradient in the background. I chose blue because it is easy on the viewer to look at. I used the type tool for all my text, excluding the title, where I used MS WordArt copied and pasted right from Word. To italicize the mini-titles I sheared them about 15° horizontally. I also wrapped the blue character text around her pants and shoes to fit it all in the corner. I ended up having 22 layers in my project, as I used that panel quite a bit to separate every detail out. To draw my character, I used the Wacom tablets from the SPARK labs. These tablets are awesome and exponentially increased what I could do with this project. I am very pleased with how my project turned out, especially for my first time ever using Illustrator.

Self-Critiques

When we finished our projects, we were instructed to write a self-critique for them. This way we could reflect on how our projects turned out.

This critique required us to assess three main points:

1. How our assigned class readings on design informed our compositional strategy and choice of imagery
2. How we hope our final image describes, references, or evokes dystopia or utopia, or 1980s culture and technology
3. How specific Photoshop tools and techniques influenced our creative process

Take a look at the collage here! 

To obtain an idea for my design, I considered the “photomontage” and “collage” entries in Grove Art Online through WSU Library’s SearchIT. There were some neat ideas found in there I really liked, and I based my project off the collages I found there. I looked up dystopian collages online as well to gather some inspiration for my project.

I borrowed from the frequent 1980’s pop culture references that Ernest Cline slings all throughout his book Ready Player One. In the top left corner of my project, I included a blue cassette tape and pink shutter shades, items commonly found in the eighties. In the bottom-right corner lies a picture of Ronald Reagan, the American president of the eighties. He was one of the most important figures of the time. I also used a variety of photos to suggest dystopia. In the bottom-left corner, I cut out the bridge and man from Edvard Munch’s The Scream, and placed a gas mask over his disturbed face. The mask signifies something terribly wrong with the surroundings, i.e. nuclear fallout, disease, chemical warfare, or anything else that may evoke the need for it. I also included two World War II planes in the upper right corner, a general statement of war and death. Lastly, the background is a city in ruins if you look closely at it – certain buildings are falling apart and there is some sort of growth appearing in others. I used a variety of aspects from The Elements of Design. The scanned image of flowers does not fit with the dystopian theme – I intended it to be the one piece of utopia in my image. I juxtaposed the flowers by setting them in such a dystopian scene, and then set fire underneath them. I balanced out my project by placing matching items in each empty corner, using one big background to fill empty space, and The Scream image as a centerpiece. I have a variety of color in my project, including some black and white photos of the planes.

The photoshop tool that influenced my project the most was the Quick Selection Tool. It made it very easy to pick out pieces of photos that I wanted to use. I also feathered most of my images to make them look less cropped and more blended in with the surroundings, which I learned how to do in the Photoshop CC: 10 Things Beginners Want to Know How To Do tutorial. I used multiple testing layers to copy some layers in case of a mistake or to just see how a change would look without ruining the entire layer.