Experience the City

This was a fun side project for which I was required to make a piece drawing on a provided set of clipart for images. I decided to use New York as the city because its the first big city that comes to mind, and because I had originally wanted to use a quote about New York but ended up scrapping it.

Self Promo

Our final project was to create a Self Promo piece. I couldn't decide what direction to go with mine because while my major is Graphic Design, my close second choice is Biblical Studies (and I may go to Seminary after I graduate), so I decided to do a take of the "left-right brain" concept, and show both my creative side and my Bible side. I printed this 2 ft by 3ft.

David's Coffeshop

I had to create an ad using some of Gestalt's principles based off of a logo I created earlier this year. The primary Gestalt principles used in this piece are proximity and similarity.

The Narrative

We had to create a magazine cover, table of contents and spread. I made mine about missions work worldwide, basing the headlines and information from stories from www.imb.org.

Fourth of July

I had to create a piece in the style of an art period of my choice. I chose Victorian because it looked like a lot of fun, and I just enjoyed the look of them. I decided on the 50th anniversary of the Fourth of July because it seemed like a good subject for a 2 ft by 3 ft poster and I could do something fun and colorful with it.

Randy Alcorn

These are book cover designs for Randy Alcorn's series of books called Deadline, Dominion, and Deception.

Mere Christianity

A cover redesign for C.S. Lewis' book, "Mere Christianity."

Wage War

This is a type poster created using 1 Peter 2:11.

Infographic

We had to create a project using Gestalt's Principles. I decided to make an infographic briefly illustrating Liberty University's history. The principles I incorporated into this piece are proximity, similarity, and continuance.

FARM

Our assignment was to create a piece based on the art theory, Constructivism. Basically, we had to create something that upon a second glance revealed something beyond the surface. In mine, I illustrated a farm scene, and used the elements in the picture to spell the word, "Farm." Brilliant. I know.

Cause Life Billboard

I created this as a class assignment to design a billboard for anyone or anything that we chose. I decided on causelife because one of my friends had been trying to raise money for a well, and so I designed this for the class but also for him.

Magazine Recreation

Our professor gave our class the task of recreating a magazine page as exactly as we could. I tore this page out of Alternative Press magazine

Boon Inc Brochure

This is a brochure that I created as a class project for real-life company Boon Inc, a kids bath accessories producer. Our professor knows the owner of the company, and received the text and pictures from her.

Sawdust Festival

I created this ad for the Sawdust Art Festival in California as a class project. Our Professor provided the text, but she left the rest to our discretion.

Red: The Heroic Rescue

I created this Movie Poster based on Ted Dekker's fantasy novel, "Red." On the left stands Justin, the protagonist in the story. Thomas, the main character, occupies the middle, and Quorong, the antagonist, takes the far right.

Bell's Soap

I created this as an ad following a redesign of a ficticious product, "Bell's Soap." The "client" gave us the original logo and then what he thought of the soap. He came in twice, the first time to critique our first attempt, the second to critique our final. This is my final.

Move. With Assurance and Hope

I created this image as part of a graphic design application at school. I had to make an image based around the concept of confidence in God. As I thought about it, I realized that confidence in God allows us to move forward without fear, with assurance and hope. The arrows symbolize the forward motion, the large "Move." I wrote a simple statement, a command, an exhortation to move and not remain motionless.

Caution: Do Not Cross

I created this as a part of my application for a graphic design position at school. They asked me to create a photo-based and a text-based image, each based around its own theme that they provided. This image represents purity within relationships. In any romantic relationship you must draw a line, and you cannot cross that line. We must exercise caution because beyond that line lies things that may pique our curiosity,  but we should not cross that line.

Photorealistic Product Illustration

Problem: Our assignment was to choose a real product that could be found locally, and to create a photorealistic rendition of it.

Solution: I chose Hellman's Mayonnaise, and decided to use a knife as a prop since it would be fairly simple to make and it is a utensil commonly associated with Mayo.

I began with the parts of the jar actually showing mayonnaise. I would pick which part I wanted to work on, trace around it with the pen tool, fill the area with the general color that it would be, then use the gradient mesh to adjust. To achieve the highlights and shadows, I would put mesh points within the areas themselves, and then place more around it to control the degree to which it spread.


One of the first things I did was trace the largest letters on the jar, just to get started. I used no mesh on the letters, mostly because the odd shapes messed with the way the mesh formed. For drop shadows, I just copied the letters and positioned them correctly, then color-picked the shadow behind them. The hardest part was tracing the obscured words on the top of the lid, as well as on the bottom left. The ones on the top could be reduced to general shapes, and it looked just right. The words on the bottom right, however, could be easily read when printed out so I had to continually zoom in, adjust, zoom back out and repeat in order to get the letters looking as normal as possible.

One of the biggest challenges was making the swoosh on the label look right. I tried to just use a gradient mesh and fade the edges into the yellow with the color picker. However, no matter what I did, the swoosh always stood out too much. Eventually, however, I decided to pen-tool the shape, use a gradient to get the movement from a lighter gray to darker, and then use a feather effect so that it would fade into the yellow like it was supposed to.

The other most challenging part of this project was the shadow in the background. I had problems similar to those with the swoosh, the shadow just stood out too much on the edges. I eventually decided to go with a solution similar to what I did to the swoosh. I pen-tooled the shape, used a gradient mesh to get the colors inside of the shadow correct, and then used a feather on the edges so that it would properly fade into the background.

For the ridges, I just made rectangles approximately the size of each ridge and copied them all along the lid.

One of the last steps before the finished project was making sure that there were no empty spaces between the pen-tooled shapes. To see them, I just took away the background, and adjusted the shapes to fill any gaps that weren't supposed to be there.

Here's the finished project (followed by the original, again):