Rundown: Week Ending 2/7/14

1st and 2nd Period Graphic Design

As part of our ongoing series on rules for good graphic design, 1st and 2nd periods discussed Rule 4: Alignment and Spacing.  To apply their understanding of the concepts of alignment and using grids in design, students were asked to fix the layout of the Adventure Time coloring book cover below.

4th and 6th Period Graphic Design

 As a non-electronic introduction to using words and images to communication (i.e., the definition of Graphic Design), students did the first steps of an assignment where they drew a half self-portrait and accompanied it with 3D lettering.  Students' pencil drawings were replaced with thick marker.

5th Period Animation Lab

Students continue their work on their personal rotoscoping sequence.  Students should have approximately 40 frames complete by now to be considered on schedule.  A sample of one student's progress is below.

Rundown: Week Ending 12/13/13

1st, 2nd and 4th Period Graphic Design

This week, in our work with principles of good design, we've been discussing color and how best to use color effectively in students' work.  To show this, students created an abstract artwork using their own name and cololored three sections in one of the color schemes we've been discussing (complementary, analogous and monochromatic).  As an additional challenge, students could also have created their own color scheme using the color scheme designer website and applied this scheme to the whole artwork.

5th Period Animation Lab

This week, Animation students were working on finishing touches on their 150-frame flipbooks that are due this Friday.  Once students are done with these, we will be filming these in our software Jellycam to create finished cartoon-style animations.

6th Period Graphic Design

Rundown: Week Ending 11/8/13

1st Period Graphic Design

Now this class has shown that they're pretty comfortable with Photoshop and turing in digital assignments, an important transition in the class is beginning.  Now, we're working toward our work in students learning design principles to make their future work even better than before.  Now, they'll become real designers!  The first step of this process is for students to do a mostly unguided design for a band flier.  The assignment can be found HERE.  These first posters will serve as the baseline for students to base their design growth.  As we worth through the design principles, students will be redesigning this flier several times.  

2nd Period Graphic Design

Students have been working on the pre-assessment stage of our upcoming design princlples work by creating a band flier.  As we work through our exploration of design principles that will greatly improve their work, students will be revising this first flier several times, resulting in a final, well-designed piece.  A few students have taken extra classtime to create artwork for our school's ASB t-shirts.

4th Period Graphic Design

Like first and second period students, the period four team has been working on the pre-assessment stage of our upcoming design princlples work by creating a band flier.  As we work through our exploration of design principles that will greatly improve their work, students will be revising this first flier several times, resulting in a final, well-designed piece.  A few students have taken extra classtime to create typographic quote artwork.

5th Period Animation Lab

 

If you haven't seen it, the MMS Animation Lab YouTube page has been updated with this year's first showcase of student animation work.  19th century pre-animation toys, known as Thaumatropes, can be seen spinning HERE.

This week, students turned in their final zoetrope drums and animation strips.  Video of this great work will show up on the YouTube site, soon!  Following zoetrope work, the team started watching the second part of the "Forging the Frame" series.  For students needing to complete the worksheet, the video can be found HERE.

6th Period Graphic Design

1st Quarter's 6th period class ended on Wednesday.  For the week, students spent their time making sure that they had any loose ends tied up and work turned in. This was a great group!

2nd Quarter's new class met only for a short while, but in that time we did a brief drawing exercise in which students drew pictures for certain words and for others, were asked to draw the word in a way that expressed the word's meaning (example, for "cold" they might draw the letters as ice).  

Rundown: Week Ending 11/1/13

1st Period Graphic Design

Leading up to Dia de los Muertos on November 1, 1st, 2nd and 6th periods worked on creating traditional sugar skull designs.  First, they searched online for images of calaveras, taking note of recurring design language (i.e., flowers over eyes; floral motifs; upside heart-shaped nose, etc.).  Next, student's used the template like the one found HERE to create their design in Photoshop.

2nd Period Graphic Design

Like 1st period, 2nd period Graphic Design have been working on sugar skull designs (see 1st period description above). On November 1st, period 2 helped hang this display:

4th Period Graphic Design

Following a discussion of the appearance in our school last year of several racist Halloween costumes, this class, using THIS set of guidelines, created awareness posters based on a similar campaign begun at Ohio University.  The results were incredible!  

Design in image by Raelynn

5th Period Animation Lab

Students have been racing toward the due date of Wednesday 11/6 to have complete their zoetrope drum, test zoetrope strip and final strip.  Many students are almost finished.  Additionally, with the end of the quarter approaching, many students have missing assignments that still need to be turned in.  Some students have the following missing:

• Squash and stretch sequence grid worksheet
• Flip book(s)
• Animation history questions
• Zoetrope question worksheets
• Forging the Frame - pt. 1 video worksheets
• Zoetrope test animation/flipbook

Students still needing to complete the Forging the Frame - pt. 1 video worksheets can visit the film at http://bit.ly/animationhistory.

6th Period Graphic Design

In addition to working on their own sugar skull designs (see above), this group has been working to finish up several assignments and get them turned in before the end of the quarter on 11/6.