Using the Printing Facilities

Attached below are some images of an Art Fund Pavilion competition our class participated in after the competition was over.  Basically, we used the parameters of the competition to design a temporary art pavilion in the garden space at The Lightbox Museum in Woking, England. In order to better learn the facilities available at school and the application of a multitude of software, we we asked to put together a printed media of our design intervention for the Art Fund Pavilion.  That is what you are seeing here.  I have broken it up into four images for easier viewing, but the end result for me was a 36″ x 12″ print that could be folded into a pamphlet.

Also, here’s a larger view of one of my model renderings.  It’s a little easier to see on its own.

Working With Bonzai

This is a Pool Table I did as a Tutorial. I used the Offset Outline, Reshape, and Round tools to create most of it.

This is a vault modeled using the Thicken tool, as well as Difference tool

Here is my first original model built in Bonzai that wasn’t a tutorial

Gazebo

Quotes, Thoughts, and Links from Class

This should be an ongoing list.  Keep your eye out for more information and links…

QUOTES & THOUGHTS:

“Drawings should reinforce and idea. They shouldn’t just be drawings for the sake of drawings.”

“Drawings are not self serving.”

“Develop a work process, not an affinity towards one program.”

“Intention is not computable.”

“Be skeptical about how much detail you add to a 3-d model.”

“Don’t let people look at your drawings and see exactly how you did something. Make it yours.”

“What are you going to tell Larry King 20 seconds before they show your project?”

“It is helpful to look at work that compels you and then try to emulate the qualities that speak to you.”

“Express intent in your drawings. If this is an Art Gallery show that its a damn good place to view art.”

“If you let your computer do your work for you, your work is going to suck big time.”

LINKS:

Portfolio and published works: www.lulu.com

AutoCAD details from manufacturer:   www.caddetails.com – or – www.arcat.com

Lynda and VTC: www.miami.muohio.edu/training

Other Tutorials: www.designreform.net – therevitkid.blogspot.com – www.youtube.com

Maps: www.bing.com/maps – maps.google.com

Bonzai: www.bonzai3d.com

Learning Revit

REVIT

To begin our Revit introduction, we followed a tutorial provided by Autodesk.  It took us through a step-by-step introduction to the program to model a residence.

The following video shows a lighting study of the model I drew.  I spruced it up a little in Photoshop CS4 and added a border and other effects. Ooooo Shnazy!

Learning Photoshop

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LIGHTING

In the following images we learned how to use lighting effects and lighting with layers to enhance images.

 

This shows a soft omni lighting effect

 

This image shows a triple down light with color changes to the lights

Now onto lighting using layers and layer masks.  The benefits to lighting in this manner are the increased number of choices you are given to help reach your desired effect.

 

Using adjustment layers & masks allowed me to create my own soft omni effect

By refining the edge of my layer mask and adjusting the brightness and contrast in the above picture I created my own effect.  The lighting adjustments don’t effect the area where the layer mask occurs.  Another example of this can be seen more drastically in the image below.

 

This example highlights the spy in the background trying to steal industry secrets

 

BLENDING

In the following series of images I used the Auto-Blend Layers and Auto-Align Layers commands to alter some images I found on the web.  Photoshop can take images that you have overlapped and automatically combine them to make a larger more comprehensive image.  You can either stack your images one on top of the other, or side-by-side.

The image below is comprised of three random images of a similar subject matter. One image is a skyline, another shows sunlight shooting through clouds, and the last is a cloudy sky at sunset.  They have been stacked and blended.

 

Nice effect considering its three different times of the day

The next image uses Auto-Align and Auto-Blend to create this photographers panoramic shot of Nature.  I used a series of eight photographs taken by the artist and overlapped them substantially to help Photoshop align and blend the image.

 

Looks awesome! I'm afraid I may only take panoramic pictures from now on

 

QUICK SELECTION TOOL

This tool can be used to easily and efficiently alter and/or extract multi-colored subject matter from images.

For the example below I will use the street vendor you’ve seen in the prior “Lighting” section of this post.  I still don’t know what the guy is selling and neither do you. So why not have a little fun and make this guy, “Hulk Out.” 

 

Another bad day in the piazza

The next shot is of the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan.  This was a study in perspective and adding people to a background image.  I added a guy with a bike, a soldier from the People’s Liberation Army Navy, and a guy praying on his knees under the soldier’s right arm.  The Quick Selection Tool allows you to quickly extract images for this use.  Go figure, the name says it all.

 

You can't lead a field trip without your Type 56 assault rifle

 

ART HISTORY BRUSH

The Art History Brush is an easy tool used for altering the appearance of any image.  You can select from a vast library of art brush styles that give many different effects to an image.  You can adjust how much distortion you want to use by changing brush sizes and types.

The following photo is of a field in Tuscany that I found on the web. The picture following the photo shows how the Art History Brush can alter the look of an image and give it a different artistic quality.

 

Original photo

Altered Photo

 

Here is another example of the Art History Brush.  I used a light chalk brush and softened up the image.

 

Original Image

 

Altered Image

Sketches and Drawings altered in Illustrator

This is a pen and ink sketch I did of a Gustave Dore engraving.  It has been changed with the Live Trace and Live Paint commands in Illustrator.  With this sketch I show two different types of tracing presets.  The first preset is the default and the second is comic art.  On both I changed the black ink from the sketch to a color using Live Paint.  I didn’t feel that a fill color for this image was appropriate, so I left the body of the sketch white.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this next image I took a sketch I found on google images.  I’m not sure who drew them, but lets be clear it wasn’t me.  I don’t want to steal credit for creating them.  Anyway, I did the same thing with these as I did with the above images.  I used Live Trace and Live Paint.  These were traced using preset Comic Art and then filled with color.

 

These are the originals from the web

 

These are the images after Illustrator

 

The next image I changed is a small house section.  I brought it into Illustrator and added color and some arrows to show a simple diagram of routes taken by occupants to exit the house in case of a fire.

 

A little unclear, but a first attempt none the less

 

The next image is of a simple black and white doodle that has been vectored and colored using Live Trace and Live Paint.

 

 

A little color to add some life

Crash Course in Graphic Media

This blog has been created to follow my experiences and progress while learning new software programs used in the field of Architecture. During this short summer session of graphic media classes we hope to learn about such programs as Adobe Illustrator, Revit, 3D StudioMax, and Bonzai. This list does not encompass everything, but you get the picture. I hope that by creating this blog you get an idea of what we learn in class and how I have applied it. Since I am just starting with this software, please send me your criticism, advice, and ideas. Your thoughts will no doubt help me greatly.

Hi Friends!

So… I started blogging… Happy Independence Day!