Tag Brush

There's nothing really special about this project, it's simply the logo I made in "Homage to my Alma Maters" (check it out by scrolling below), and I simply used some effects and created a tag brush with it here.

My inspiration for the color was to create a cool effect. The blue, green and red added a nice shadow effect that I quite liked, and it looks even cooler on the edges of the logo, where you can see the green and red more distinctively on each side.

My Self Portrait 20: "Break New Ground"

When it came to making a self-portrait that could be in the style of a cool background or motivational poster, I immediately knew where I would take my inspiration:

Fifa.

I decided to base my portrait off of the Champions Edition cover for Fifa 20, the most recent installment of the soccer series, featuring Liverpool FC star Virgil Van Dijk:

Selecting my style would be the easy part, making it would be harder. First I had to get a picture to use for the screenshot. I used a full version of the image of Virgil on the cover as the inspiration to my photo: 

So, I decided to replicate his pose using my timed iPhone as a camera, a Virgil Van Dijk jersey, and tried to don a menacing look towards the camera.

I might need to work on that menacing look, but I was set. Now I just needed to get to work. Making the background for my project was quite easy. I simply made some rectangles, and made the PS4 logo at the top. The hard part would come very soon though, when I'd have to make the actual portrait part of the cover. I used a simple gradient for the background of where my body would rest, and then drew myself onto it. It took a while, roughly six hours to fix that all up. Once I finished drawing myself, I was almost finished, but I needed to add a gradient mesh! I decided to add some shadows to my arms and my face, given how shadows were most noticeable for those areas in the picture. 

Anyway, here is my final product:

Overall, I'm really proud of my work, and even though I had to forgo a few parts (I couldn't place the logo over my torso like in the actual cover, and I couldn't add the interesting bits in the background since the decisions were even more complicated,) I still think it looks very nice, and I might just print it and use it in the cover of my actual game!

I used the tool, to draw the tool.

I have spent many hours this semester clicking on the screen, dragging objects, right-clicking, and having the urge to squeeze and destroy my dreaded computer mouse when creating projects. Adobe Illustrator isn't the easiest program to use, and I have made countless errors that force me to click "Command" and "Z" on my keyboard, just to then have to re-correct or even get wrong again. Because I have used the mouse so much, I decided to take a picture of a computer mouse, and use it for my project.

When creating the object in Illustrator, I noticed the multiple shadows and changes of tone of color on the mouse, so I did my best to incorporate them into my own image. Especially on the mouse itself, and on the light at the bottom.

My hardest part of the project was actually the decision to change what I was doing. I originally wanted to make it pop and be vibrant in a green color, but decided to change to the more sophisticated gray color of the mouse. I had to essentially start over, which cost me a bit of time, but I think it worked for the best. I am much happier with my end result now. The shading feels natural to me, and I like how the two halves blend essentially.

Logo: a homage to my alma maters

For this project, I was given the task to create a simplistic logo that represented myself. Personally, it wasn't a hard decision to try to involve my recent high-school, Avon Old Farms, because it helped shaped me into a better person over the years I spent there. To keep along with that theme, I decided to create a simple merger between the lettering in Avon's logo, with the logo of the University of Tampa, which led to this:

I decided to use Times New Roman as the font, because the pointed edges add a bit of depth to the logo. However, without any color, it's hard to tell how the logos really mix together, so let's fix that: 

The "U" in the image isn't just colored red to coincide with the "T", to complete the UT color duo, but also to complement the blue Avon "A", as Avon Old Farms used Red and Blue (usually a darker one, a lighter one was chosen to help visibility) as their main colors.