Kacey Project 1

Merge Drawing, Object Drawing, Primitive shapes: How did you utilize them? For what purpose would chose one type over another?

In my drawing I used Merge Drawing for the sky and the small circular piece of wood under the fire; Object Drawing for the Moon; Primitive Shapes for the firewood.

I tend to use Merge Objects for anything that I want to be able to "cut" into, such as the background. I did this because I needed to create a background while preserving the hills I had already created.

I use object drawing anytime there is something I don't want interacting with everything else, or something that I plan on having move around later on. Like on the moon, I wasn't sure where I wanted it therefore I created it with object drawing so as not to cut into the background. I also was planning on later animating the moon to move across the sky.

I used primitive shapes when I new I was making something simple that wouldn't need a lot of detail. The logs are a perfect example of this I needed to make something quick and with simple curved edges, the Primitive Rectangle was perfect for the job.

Draw a image using the pen: Explain how you created this image on the blog.

There were two objects in this image that I created using the pen tool. The first being the hilly grass in the background and the second being the flames of the fire. I created the grass by making a rough outline around the bottom half of the stage, where I knew I wanted the grass to be. After which I went in with the sub selection tool and moved points around and edited curves. Once I got things more worked out I went back in and added/deleted points here and there and then converted the right, bottom, and left sides to straight lines allowing me to fill it in.

The other object were the flames, these were really fun to make. I decided to use the pen to create the flames because it would give me the ability to create it larger than I needed it and then scale it down to a much smaller size, all without losing detail or getting pixalated. So off to the side of the stage I began work on it creating the flame which I then filled, copy and pasted. Using the free transform tool I re-sized and adjusted the flames as I need so that they would fit on top of each other.

Create and then modify text: What tools did you use?

In this case I decided to use Text for the facial expressions on the Orbs in my image, allowing me to give them emoticon like eyes. I changed the font family to Tempus Sans ITC and modified the size to 27. I played around with the filters but decided in the end I liked it better without anything.

Gradient object: Please state the hexadecimal colors used.

In this picture I used gradients in 3 different places; the grass, the moon, and the dark sky. The grass I created my own gradient using 4 different color pointers (Hexadecimal numbers were: #006600, #00FF00, #00FB00, #003300). After filling in the grass I then used the Gradient Transform Tool to make the bright spot a little smaller and tilt it at an angle, giving the effect that there is a little moonlight.

Pencil and brush objects (both): Describe in your blog posting what settings you used.

In my drawing both the pencil and brush objects are fairly small. The Pencil Object in the picture is the wooden post holding the tent up. I also use the pencil to cover up part of the post that I didn't want to show. The settings I used was roughly a 4.5 pencil size and the straight mode.

The Brush Object is in the round like log underneath the fire. The light-brown swirl was made using the round brush in the 3rd biggest size. I left the Paint Mode as Paint Normal.

Use the Deco or/and Spray tools to create a background pattern: State symbol used in blog.

I created a small 5 pointed star and turned it into a symbol to use with the spray tool. You can see them scattered about in the sky. I had to mess with the setting to get it to work just right but I found after creating a 200 x 200 brush size and using a scaling of 25% width and height it worked perfectly. The random scaling and rotate symbol were both checked.

Use the transform tools to modify at least two graphics within your image:Please state which ones you modified.

There were several objects I used the transform tool on. In fact everything in my picture was transformed in some way or another. The most common thing I did with this tool was adjusting the size of objects. Other than that I moved around some of the stars I created using the spray tool. The object I did the most transforming to is the almost circular piece of wood. It was really nice to be able to take a completely circular object and manipulate it to is had to flat edges, then shrink it all in one foul swoop.

My Experience:

I found this project to be fairly fun. It was nice to get used to using all the tools and experimenting with what they could do. It was difficult to come up with an idea for what to create at first but after I started to play around I was able to decide on a cohesive idea. I would have to say my favorite tool to use this time would be the pen tool, it makes creating objects extremely easy. On top of that it creates the objects in a vector format instead of raster allowing me to play with the size as much as I want without having to worry.