This is my short depth of field image.

This is my long depth of field shot.

This is the photo montage i created.

This is the shot i took for exploring perspective.

This is my macro.

This is the picture i took for manipulating colour.

This shot is the one i took for the criteria of exploring colour.

This is a picture i took for my photography assessment. In the assessment we had to make a portfolio of images focusing on certain aspects such as long and short depth of field, macros and exploring colour and perspective. for this shot the criteria was to take a night shot.

This is me as a turtle. During our drawing for digital arts class we had to place our face on another persons body. I chose to put my head on a turtles body and if i do say so myself i make one damn sexy turtle!

This is another composite i created in the drawing for digital arts class. with this one we had to make a fruit composite.

This is a peice i created in our drawing for digital arts class, where we had to make a composite about car racing and use the title "burn some rubber". In mine theres an angel and a devil that are gonna race, and gumby's the flag dude.

This is the same poster featured in the previous blog. The only difference being that in this one the characters are saying witty phrases. Luke and Alera however didnt like the genius that is my humor and so i didn't include it in the original. But i thought that it would be unfair not to share this one with the world so i am posting it also.

This is the poster we created using our cartoon characters. This one is my second attempt as the first one unfortunatly didn't save due to computer errors. It's not quite as good as the first one but most things never are!.

this is my city vector that i created as part of tuesday mornings class. The objective was to draw a black and white cityscape as we see it in our minds. we then took it into illustrator and vectored it.

This is the vector we had to do of the earlier posted circus picture. I'm still new to vectoring so it's a little shabby but overall not a bad effort

This is super Goober the hero. He has the ability to shoot goob balls from his hands, fly and he also has super speed. He is always around to thwart Barry's plans and save the day!.

This is Sticky Steve another of super Goobers gang, he can blend in with his surroundings and he he has awesome kung fu moves.

This is pupil Pete the giant Eyeball. He's one of super goobers right hand men, he has laser beam eyes and x-ray vision.

this is Norm another of my tuesday morning characters. He doesn't have any abilities hence the name "Norm" but he still contributes to the team by using his brain and coming up with ideas.

This it the Vector of Barry Bacteria that i created in tuesday mornings class. Barry is one of 5 characters that we had to create. Barry is an evil genious who is always trying to get the city of Goobsville under his control.

How merchandisers make unpackaged products appear more appealing to consumers
It’s a know fact that packaging helps to sell a product by making it more appealing to consumers. So if a product has no packaging, then how do you make it more appealing? I chose three different unpackaged products and spoke to those who sell them. The three products I chose to focus on were shoes, cars and musical instruments. In regards to the shoes I spoke to Monique from Evans shoes, who told me that it’s all about the display. The way you set out each type of shoe is very important for example never mix the types together, dress shoes with dress shoes and sports shoes with sports shoes. Jazzing up the display’s with pretty eye catching colours and other products like hand bags or things that relate to the type of shoe also helps.

When looking into the cars I spoke to Jarred from Wagga Motors. The first thing that Jarred told me they do is to dress the car up. Examples of this would be adding alloy wheels or a spoiler or some sort of physical feature that will make the cars appearance more attractive. Another thing he mentioned was that they keep the cars and the area they are in very clean. A nice clean shiny car has a much better chance to be sold than a dirty one. Car dealers also use signs and stands which list the cars features and sale material. Things that might be put on the stands would be features like air conditioning, power steering and air bags as well as the warranty offered with the car and any special deal that might be being offered when purchasing that vehicle. Something else that jarred didn’t mention but that I think would add to the appeal would be the colour of the car. I feel that brighter more eye catching colours like red or bright blue would be more attractive than plain white or black.

The third item I selected was the musical instruments. For this I spoke to Nick from Custom Music. A big thing that he said they use is banners to endorse the product. A banner in some respects is just as good as packaging, it can be colourful and eye catching and contain a lot of the physical attraction of packaging. Nick also said that brand names help to sell the product, the more well known the brand the more likely it is to be sold. In regards to the brand Nick also said that they display the instruments accordingly, So they sort and display them by brands so all the Fenders and displayed together in one section and all they Montery’s in another. Another thing Nick mentioned about the display is the spacing they use. He said that they display the instruments evenly so that the same amount of space is between all the instruments. Doing this helps the appearance of the display because it makes it appear more organized and less cluttered and messy. As with the cars they also keep them clean and free from dust that may settle.

In brief the main ways to make unpackaged items more appealing is to keep them clean, display them attractively and efficiently, use banners and signs and make sure all relevant information that may improve the products chances of being sold is somewhere on or near the product i.e. the banners and signs.

Maltesers
Form
The colours used on the maltesers packaging are a bright red used for the background and large white font. The use of these colours make the packet stand out because the bright red catches your eye and the white font can be read from a reasonable distance. This is a good colour combination as they go well together and don’t clash and make the products name hard to read.

The brand name of this product is obviously maltesers. This is a fairly well known brand name due to TV and catalogue advertisements. By being such a well known brand and one of the only ones of this particular product it will improve it’s chances of sale as because mentioned in the cocoa, people associate brand names with good quality.

The images used on this packaging are of the product itself. The malteser balls both full and half so to see the centre, are spread out across the front of the packaging with only one on the back. The only other pictures featured on the packet are that of the opening instructions on the back of the packet.

The typography on this packet is a large rounded font similar to a cooper black or forte font. It is white with a black out line and a thin inner glow. The way the typography is placed on the packet is in a slight arch like way as the font starts larger then gets slightly smaller as it progresses across the packet. By having the font so large it allows the consumers to clearly see what the product is from both close up and at a slight distance.

There aren’t really any logos featured on the malteser packet. The only thing that could be possibly seen as a logo would be the image of the half a malteser on the back. This image is surrounded by a thin white box with an arrow pointing to the chocolate saying ‘delicious’ and one pointing to the malt centre saying ‘light and crunchy’.

The design style used for the malteser packaging is consistent throughout the whole of the packet. Both front and back have a red background, all font is white and the same images are used for both the front and back. Both the front and back also feature the phrase “crisp malt centres covered with smooth milk chocolate”.

The information found on the packet is mostly just the basic information you find on most packaging, the ingredients, the nutrition information and a brief blurb on where the product was made and where to contact the manufacturer. As well as this though there is a small box of information regarding the guarantee of quality and a number to call if the product you bought does not match the description they have written in that section.

The geometric shape of the malteser packet is a bag. It has a front, a back and no sides although when open and full it gives the appearance that it does have sides.
The only icons used on this packaging are the above mentioned instructions on opening the bag. It has three images, the first being the unopened bag with a hand showing you where to start opening. The second is the hand at the other end of the packet indicating where you need to tear to. The last is of the open bag with a hand reaching in insinuating that they are now ready to be eaten.
Function
The product packaging of this item is a thin plastic type material bag.

The construction of the packaging is there is a long rectangular shape of the material to start with. Each end is then taken and folded so that the meet in the centre of the bag with a slight overlap. It is then glued together at the bottom of the over lap so that the packet has a small flap down the back. Each of the ends are the glued and sealed and the package is complete.

The size of the maltesers packets varies depending on how large a bag you get. This particular malteser packet is about 22 centre metres long and about 12 and a half centre metres high with the net being 165g.

The protection that the bag offers for the product is not that great. It’s not however that necessary as the maltesers themselves have a thick layer of hard chocolate that protect the inner easily crushed malt, and let’s face it who really cares that much if they are a little crushed they still taste good and that’s the main thing.

Overall i feel that the malteser packaging is both effective in form and function. While there are clearly a few small issues with the function of the packaging for example it’s lack of sufficient protection, the form is really well set out and uses colours well and has just the right amount of images so they’re there but not too cluttered and messy. I love the font and the way they set it out it’s very attractive and clear to read which are both necessities when it comes to typography.

Elastoplast Shrek Bandaids

Form

The colours that are used on this packaging are orange and purple with a floral like pattern in the purple section only. It seems these colours are quite popular as the Cadbury Cocoa also used them for their packaging. I think the reason for this is they go well together and don't clash with each other.

The brand name for this product is Elastoplast. Whilst not being the best know brand for bandaids, it is still reasonably known. Unlike food the brand of the product is not as highly regarded to determine the quality of the product. With products like bandaides and such the brand name doesn't really play a large part in the consumers decision to purchase as they all do the same thing and taste is not an issue.

The images used on this products packaging are the characters from shrek. This is because the product itself also uses these characters. It also has images of the bandaids and the different characters that appear on them. It's a well know fact that products that include childrens cartoon characters sell better as children love them so parents are more inclined to buy them for this reason alone. It attracts the children to the product which is why there are calls to have this form of advertising banned on junk food products.

The type of typography used on the packaging is a basic bold, white, shadowed font for the brand name and the green shrek writing underneath. On the back of the packet the type used is the same as the brand name but smaller and less bold. It uses the colour white as this can be easily seen on top of the purple backdrop.

Theres not a great deal of logo's featured on the packet except for those of shrek and of course Elastoplast. The actual writing of shrek is the logo featured in the films. It also has a sheild at the top of the packet with the shrek 's' and a crown above it. It also has a very small 'Shrek the third' logo underneath the images of the bandaids on the back of the box. The Elastoplast logo is the text mentioned above in a red and yellow box with a white border which also seperates the red and yellow inside the box.

The design style of this product is a simple orange and purple(mostly purple) back drop with images of shrek characters and the bandaids inside placed on top of it. On the front there's a big image of shrek in the bottom left corner and a couple of bandaids beside him, with the brands logo in the top left corner. The back is completly purple with around 5 images of bandaids with different characters on them.

The information that is included on this products packaging is, how to use the product correctly, the distributor info, the address of Elastoplast and a breif description of the product and it's benifits. It also has the different sizes of the bandaides inside and their exact measurements.

The geometric shape of the packaging is a rectangular box with a small tag like thing on top so the product can be hung up.

Icons featured on this packaging are an arrow pointing down to indicate that you need to push to open, as mentioned above it has images of the two different bandaid sizes to visably show the difference.

Function

The size of the packaging is quite small which is to be expected given what it houses. It's fairly thin with the box being around 11cm high and 8 cm wide with the thin flap at top being about 1 and a half centre metres high and around 7cm wide.

The construction of the box is done in the same way that all boxes are put together, it's glued in the necessary places and has the bottom closed of and the top being the opening

The protection that this packaging offers for the product is very reasonable as the product is small bandaids. In fact i'd go as far as to say that it is unecessarily good as the product is unbreakable and therefore would be just as safe in a plastic bag. The packaging is clearly more for appearance.

Overall in my opinion the packaging sells the product well. As with the Cadbury Cocoa it uses colours effectivly and places the cartoon images largely in places where they will be well seen. As stated above the packaging is more than adequate protection wise and all information is clearly printed and easy to read.

Cadbury Bournville Cocoa

Form

The colour's used on the Cocoa packaging are mostly orange, purple and white. These colours i find blend well together and give the packaging a pleasent appearance. In my opinion products that use brighter colours catch your eye more than those that use bland weak colours like black and white. The way in which the colour's are placed on the packaging in a swirl like pattern adds to it's attractivness.

The brand name for this product is one of chocolates, especially in australia, most well known brands Cadbury. The addition of the brand name gives the product credibility as it is a well advertised therefore well respected brand. I don't think i've ever met anybody who doesn't know or has never heard the cadbury jingle "wouldn't it be nice if the world was cadbury". Alot of people want quality especially in chocolate( at least i do!) and given that cadbury is so well know people associate it with quality so in turn prefer to buy it over lesser known brands.

The image used on this packaging is a pile of tasty looking chocolate hedgehogs. The main purpose of doing this is to show the consumers the sort of things the product can produce as well as making you hungry! I find that if you can visually see the product you are purchasing it adds to the appeal.

The typography used on products is very important. It needs to be eye catching and attractive yet clear and concise. The type of typography suitable for the packaging depends on the product and who it is aimed at. If the product is bubbles aimed at children then a fun big font such as alba super or jokewood would be appropriate. In this case the product is cocoa aimed at older women so it uses a simple typography similar to Times new roman which suites the product yet still looks good.

The logo used on this packet is obviously the cadbury logo. The cadbury logo consists of white swirly joined font in a purple oval. By adding this to the packaging it affirms who the product belongs to and of course again adds credibilty to the procuct.

The design style of this products packaging is mostly orange down the bottom that comes up in swirly fashion with white underneath the swirl and purple above the product uses the same design style for all side of the packaging except the back, with the differnce being it is mostly all orange with the front design in a small bow in the top left haned corner.

This product is a great one for information. Not only does it have all the required thing like ingredients and nutritional info, it also included a recipe for chocolate hedgehogs on the back. As well as the recipe it also provided hints on how to use and store the product and the products website that you can visit for further information.

The cadbury cocoa box doesn't really use any icons except for along the top and in the recipe. Along the top of the box it has a picture of scissors to help indicate the need for scissors in opening the packaging. The other icons found in the recipe section are of a pot on the stove, a mixing bowl with a spoon and a a tray with a thermomotor coloured blue indictaing that the recipe needs to be cooled. The reason that packaging uses icons on top of written instructions is because A) not everyone can read that well and B) not everone speaks english.

The geometric shape of the Cadbury Bournville Cocoa box is your average everyday square. with a plastic bag inside to house the cocoa.

Function

The product packaging for this item is a simple cardboard box. It's not overly thick but is slightly thicker in some places where it overlaps. it's about 9 and half centre meters high and about 5 centre metres wide.

The construction of the packaging is pretty much like most boxes, glued at the bottom with two flaps at the top and a seal with a slot to put it so the box can be closed after it has initially been opened. It has been sealed in the necessary places with a clag like glue that all boxes use to be sealed.

The size of this packaging is not overly large. As mentioned above it's about 9 and a half centre metres high and about 5cm wide. The net weight of the product is 125g which in retrospect is not all that much so that itself gives an indication as to the size of the box.

The protection that this packaging offers the product is fairly reasonable. It's not as good as some products packaging such as fragile and breakable items would be but in terms of what it's protecting i'd say it's adequate.

Overall i'd say that this packaging is effective in both form and function. The colours are eye catching and don't clash, it contains all needed information, and then some as well as being a stable well built package to carry it's contents from A to B safely. The addition of the Hedehogs is a great idea as it gives the overall presentation a boost.

this is an image that i took for my photography assessment, i have the feeling i've already blogged it but i just love it so meh it's all good.

this is another drawing we did in class where we were told to think of the word circus and draw what we saw when we thought of the word.

in this one we had to create a peice around the saying "treat your mind like a bad neighbourhood, don't go there alone" so it needed to have a dark feel about it.

This is a detailed art peice we did in class where we had to use the left side of our brain to draw a detailed black and white pattern.

This is a mosaic that we did in class one day.

this is a picture i did of my baby neice taylor.

this is a picture i did of my two neices caitlin and taylor.

This is a peice we did where we created a dark abstract backdrop and then picked an issue to create a magazine spread. The issue i chose was china's occupation of tibet. I first learned about this when we studied the book sky burial in year 12. As part of that study we watched 7 years in tibet which shows china's invasion of tibet. I feel strongly that Tibet should be freed and left to live the life they choose.

My childrens story book

The characters i came up with when asked to were Super Goober, Pupil Pete, Sticky Steve and Barry Bacteria. There's a fifth character norm but he's not in the paintings. The basis behind my painting is that Barry bacteria is an evil peice of Bacteria who wants to rule Goobsville. He uses vicious diseases as weapons. The aim for Super Goober and the gang is to thwart Barry's evil plans and save Goobsville. In this particular part of the story Barry is planning to unleash a tub of Flu contaminated snot onto Goobsville in order to control them since they will be to sick to defend themselves. But never fear Super Goober is right around the corner ready to Stop barry and once again save the day.

Song 8

The feeling and colours i got from this song were a swirl of bright, happy, feel good colours with a country feel about them. green for grass, blue for the sky and red because i just felt like sticking it there.

Song 7

This song, especially the guitar gave me a gentle breezy felling. so I drew light blue and yellow squiggles to represent the breeze. The pink and red spots represent the nature feeling so they to me are like pretty flowers.

Song 6

This song gave me a sense of yearning, like love surrounded by mess and chaos. I saw the red as it's the colour of love and surrounded it with a mess of brown as this is the colour of dirt. i did this to symbolise messy love.

Song 5

This song to me sounds like nails on a chalk board! which is why i saw black with white streaks down it, just couldn't get past the nails down the chalk board.

Song 4

The thought that sprung(pardon the pun) to mind was that of spring time. bright spring like colours such as green, blue and yellow were what i saw, since i got the sense of spring all happy and nice.

Song 3

This song envoked dark washed out colours placed in a way that was just all over the place, a big washed out dark smother.

Song 2

When the song started it was loud and dominating which made me think of loud dominating colours such as blue, red and bright pink. The song then softened which made me think of softer colours and then boomed again at the end which gave me the whole bright and bold to soft back to bright and bold pattern.

Synaesthesia

The following 8 images were painted in accordance to listening to a peice of music and painting the coloursand images we got from that peice of music.

Song 1

When i heard the song the thing that popped into my head was the blue sky and the clouds. I must admit that i used yellow because the song was the simpsons so it made me think of them and they are yellow.

rough sketch number 4

rough sketch number 3

this is another of my rough sketches

This is one of my rough sketches page for my designing of the booklet

This is the back inlay of my Cd assessment

This is the completed and printed cd face from the assessment

This is an image of my finished and printed front cover of my Cd booklet.

The design Process for my CD booklet
The first thing that I did to begin the process was to research music genres, even though I had already pretty much settled on what my booklet was going to be about. Doing this showed me what other options I had and the possibilities I had to choose from should I change my mind and decide not to create a cd based on my self. Once I had settled on my idea and chosen my lyrics I began to design. Throughout the process I made many changes and even completely changed the whole design. My initial idea was for the album title to be break free. The design I chose was a beach theme including myself standing on the beach with my arms outstretched in a manner that suggests I was “breaking free”.
After playing around with this idea for a little while I came up with a new concept, mostly because I wanted the booklet to contain mostly my own images and there was no beach near by. I changed the album title to look deeper, another track on the album and the cover design to a pair of eyes. The inside of the booklet consisted of images that I had taken. I then began to sketch ideas down as to how I wanted it to look and be set out. I sat down and looked at the lyrics and thought of which images would go best with them. I drew up in my diary rough ideas of the images and which lyrics they would go with. Once I had settled on the images I got my camera and began to take the pictures.
The first image I took was my eyes to be used for both the cover and the track look deeper. It took several attempts to get this picture right especially since I have difficulty keeping my eyes open in pictures! I then took the images to be used for the remaining 9 tracks which were, a leafless tree, a close up of a flower, a angel ornament, clouds, ears, a pill bottle surrounded by pills( in this case multi vitamins), a teddy bear ornament and a music box. The image I used for break free was one I took for my photography assignment which I really liked and thought it would look great as the back drop. The photographs I took of the ears I then took into photo shop used the pen tool to cut them out and made a composite of ears as the background for the track “deaf ears”.
The cover which included the eyes I felt was a little bare looking and when I got Luke’s opinion he to said it looked under designed which prompted me to make some changes. The new design I came up with consisted of a river and the reflection of the eyes in the river surrounded by plants and flowers. The cover I finished with I came across by accident. I knew we were allowed to use stock exchange images so I decided to look for a river on the site. While looking for the river is when I stumbled upon the beautiful image of the cascading waterfall. The moment I saw it I knew it would make an excellent cover so I changed my search to look for waterfalls to find one for the back inlay to match the front. Once I had found the three images I wanted from the stock exchange website I saved them to my hard drive and inserted them in photo shop. All the images in my booklet I desaturated to give them a black and white semi washed out appearance as I felt this suited my type of music which is alternative folk like.
I opened up a document sized 12.8cm by 12.8cm which is the measurement I got from one of my cd cases plus the 3mm bleed. I created the grids and inserted the pictures then as mentioned above desaturated the images. The initial type face I had selected was brush script STD but on advice from Luke decided to change it. The new type face I chose was Arial black, but again advice from look that the font was to bold and over shadowed the text I eventually settled on Arno pro. The font size I settled on was 8pt. In order to make the text better seen on the black and white backgrounds I created a feathered box filled it white and changed the opacity so it was just a faded white box beneath the text. The design I chose for the lyrics was to align all of them to the right side and the song title up the top on the left. Doing this not only looked good but also allowed me more room for my lyrics.
The design I chose for the track titles was informal Roman as the font sized 30 with drop shadow and outer glow which made the text stand out more from the background which in turn made it easier to see. I used the same font and blending options for the track listing, however I made the track listing green and of course a smaller size. I also created my own barcode for the back in photo shop which I feel was a better option than simply getting one from the net and pasting it on. As a back cover for the booklet I decided to create an about me section in which I gave a brief blurb on myself and of course it wouldn’t be an album without the thank you section.
As for the disk face the design I came up with was I selected another photo I had taken for photography which is a watery leafy, which I felt sat nicely with the water theme that I had going. Like all my other images I desaturated it and added my name and album title on either side of the hole in the middle. I used a similar type face to the front cover yet different because although I needed and wanted consistency, I also want some slight diversity and I feel that the two type faces go well together and compliment each other nicely. For the front cover I chose a curly like font and set it out so that my name was about two or three pts bigger than the album title.
In evaluation I feel that the overall outcome is pleasing and achieves the purpose of expressing my self and my music quite well. I did run into several problems and had made some bad choices for the design especially with the type face, but as I am learning I asked Luke for help and advice and feel that the tips and suggestions he made greatly improved those bad decisions and made the project more appealing to the eye and easier to read in some cases. I’m quite pleased with the result and how much effort I put into both creating and improving the overall design. Although probably far from perfect the end result in my opinion is pretty good especially considering this is my first attempt at this sort of stuff and I am relatively new to photo shop and using a digital camera! I know I will only improve as I go but I feel this is a pretty good effort.

How I came up with my Idea for my CD booklet
When we were told that we were going to be creating a CD booklet based on a fictional, made up band I instantly decided to do my self. Music is a big love of mine and something I have been involved with since I was young. Being a musician and already having a bunch of lyrics I felt that it would be in my benefit to do my self as already having the lyrics would allow me more time to work on the design and production of the booklet. Having been writing lyrics since I was 11 years old I had a fairly decent sized collection to choose from. Although some may see this as being an easy option as I already had the lyrics, I disagree as I did at one stage have to write them so therefore would put in just as much effort it’s just spread over a longer amount of time. Also as I am an aspiring musician and would one day like to release a CD I thought that this was the perfect chance to design and create my own booklet.
I did however research different styles and ideas to see what else was out there. I went on the internet and looked up the different genres and selected 5 to come up with an idea for and toy around with a little bit. The five genres I selected were country, death metal, pop, rap and reggae. For each genre I came up with an artist or band name, an album title and a rough design for the cover. For the country genre my idea was to do a band called the Buckaroos with the album title being time. The rough design I came up with for that was an image of a big clock as the cover. For death metal my band name was death maggot with a not so thought out title of bring your own brick. The image I had in mind for this was a dead maggot in a pool of blood.
Since that idea was clearly, well crap I came up with one for Reggae. The artist I came up with for this was Jeff Turner and the album title being chill out. The idea for the cover was to have someone meditating as reggae has a smooth peaceful feel about it. For pop I choose a teeny-bopper name Randy-lee Murphy and a typical style pop title sweet kisses with the cover of course being a close up of Randy’s head. With Rap I came up with the name Lickwid for the artist and gets me some for the title as this was the sort of titles I came across in my research. The cover design for Rap was to have a Rapper in particular an African America Rapper standing up against a brick wall looking cool and indifferent.
Obviously none of those ideas had a lot of merit and I feel this is because I couldn’t get past in my mind, although I was trying to the idea of creating a cd booklet on my self. I often find that the case once I get an idea it’s hard to change my mind especially when it’s something I am so passionate about like music. Throughout my research I came across many interesting genres that I had never really heard of before which would have been interesting to do but I couldn’t seem to shake my initial idea. After doing this I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t go past my initial idea of doing my self. Since I had now chosen what my idea was I then sat down and sorted through my lyrics to pick which one’s I thought were the best. Once I had selected the 10 songs I wanted to include in my booklet I sat down and began designing.

my first blog

nothing exciting to say really but this is my first ever blog so yay!