Week 5B Calendar Full Critique & Submission

Today during class, every student presented their calendar design. Most of them were fantastic. Personally, mine was a bit of a challenge initially. I wanted to drift away of the Halloween concept for the month of October. Instead, I decided to represent the brisky colder air of the season, with the leaves flying around, while enjoying a pleasant stroll with a dog. I received valuable suggestions, which I applied right away. I condensed the type for the word October, added details to the large leaf located on the right upper corner and reduced its size. Also included a line on the right side of the pavement, to extend more the composition.
Later created several png of the calendar in various sizes to submit to Smashing Magazine, and Prof. Pannafino.

with calendar

without calendar

Week 5 Calendar

The calendar version for October is ready. Also the version without calendar. The size is 1440 x 900 pt. Initially I didn't save my original work at school, which uses CS6, to be compatible with previous versions of Illustrator. So, in order to be able to work at home with my CS5 version, I had to start my work from the beginning.
I like separating the contents of  my work in different layers. I do this in order to facilitate locate items, and also to lock the layer and avoid unintended modifications.

This screenshot includes the Adobe Illustrator window with a list of my layers on the right side

October Calendar Wallpaper

October Wallpaper without calendar

Week 4B

I continue to work on the Calendar with Illustrator. I added the dog, a background that I will change at a late time, and the weekdays of the month. Also, changed the color of the Smashing logo to place on the artboard.

Week 4A

Worked on Illustrator tracing some leaves to use on the Calendar. It took me the entire class to get a handle of it. Initially, my thoughts were to include the images based on the photos I took, but soon, I realized that was not the direction I wanted to follow. Instead, I will not be using any of the photos, only the freehand sketch I did in a previous class. I didn't save the file of the leaves.
I did review again some of the tutorials on Lynda.com, like tracing artwork, photos, with the pen tool.

Week 3B Out of Class Work

Here, I need to present a plan for the creation of the October calendar. First would be to get my photos as reference to create the objects of the design.
Since is not cold enough yet, I had to resort to older familiy pictures for the fall fashion. The change of leaves is not full blown. So I visited to Michael's to take some photos of their fall foliage. I had a few snapshots of cups of Cappuccino from the Coffee Company in Lancaster, PA. Also, a couple snapshots of the streets of Mechanicsburg, PA, a quaint little town.

Here are some images for inspiration

Week 3B

For this class, we looked at different ways to render or represent the objects or elements that would be part of the calendar page. We went over the mood boards of several classmates, who indicated what was the idea they intended to express. All great ideas. Many students made suggestions to improve the approach  to better convey their thoughts. Also, we were to make sketches that included elements we want present on the calendar design. Here are some of my ideas:

Week 3A Out of Class Work

The mood I intend to create here, is based on the colors of season's foliage. The warmth of a good cup of coffee. Sense of friendship and Fall fashions, like the use of jackets and scarves. Everything Light and airy. A simple and sober typography in earth tones goes well with the month of October.

Week 3A

Today in class, we did an exercise on Mind Maping with the word October. The idea is to quickly relate words to the central topic and see how the concept grows. Then Talked about an assignment of a wallpaper calendar. Here's my Mindmap exercise:

Later, we got the definition and process for Mood Boards, which is a technique to organize ideas and inspiration when a production is started. This is particularly beneficial because it jumpstart our creativity, and makes sharing ideas easy.

This shot is my initial Moodboard, it still requires other elements.

Week 2 - Out of class

To be completed.
Still working on Logos homework. Watched most videos on Lynda.com
UPDATE:
I finally finished the Logos homework. Using the pen tool to trace the logos takes a while to handle. This was a great exercise to gain confidence using the pen tool in Illustration, which can be a bit tricky. To remove the handlebar on an anchor point, I press the option key while clicking on the anchor point. This prevents weird or unwanted curves when joining a new point.

All logos path lines are selected, showing their anchor points

Traced logos in Illustrator ( I used CS5.5)

Week Two

Regretably, I missed Wednesday class. Only recently I was able to find out about the homework assingned. I must view new videos in other areas of the Illustrator CS6 Training, and try to re-create the logos provided:

I will add an update, when I find out more about the activities in class.

Week 1 - Out of Class

On Lynda.com viewed a series of videos of the Illustrator CS6 Essential Training. Here, I familiarized myself with the interface of the program, set up preferences, view rulers, grids, and set up guides on the work area. I learned that locking and hiding artwork is a way to access hidden pieces in the projects, and protect them from other users. Also, how to create multiple artworks in the same document, and the use of selection tools for grouping, resizing, rotating, aligning, and distributing objects.