Objectives for Week 8
LInks and media for this week: Self-evaluation of the Alphabet Project answer the following questions as honestly as possible:
0 Comments
Objectives for Week 6
Media Files and Links for this week:
Yearbook Project - Portraits A small number of Commercial Art students have been taking student portraits over the past month and a half. Now it's time to get all of us in the program to finish this part of our yearbook. You will be learning how photographers finish a portrait off by correcting and calibrating the following details:
Go Red for Women T-shirt Design We have been asked to do a community service project for Phoenixville Hospital's celebration of the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign. Kathleen Clarke, a cardiac nurse at the hospital, describes what they are looking for below: We are looking at having a contest to design the American Heart Association Campaign GO RED for Women. We were hoping that the students might help us design the t-shirt that we sell to fundraise for the campaign. My initial thoughts are that you all could do something internally to narrow down to 3-5 designs, and then we could have a vote here, giving a small award to the top 3. We have in the past just used the Go Red portion rather than including the “for women” to make it more inclusive of the entire population. The Phoenixville Hospital logo will appear on the left front in the pocket position. What we will be designing is the back of the shirt. Your designs should fit into a letter size space (either landscape or portrait orientation.) You might want to do a little research before beginning to create your design. The event is taking place in February of 2014 and might include a heart icon as a start.
Here is the link to the national organization's event website. I would like to see idea thumbnails in pencil completed by Tuesday afternoon and a finished one-color design by next Friday. All work should be completed in Adobe Illustrator. The winning design will earn an additional t-shirt project in our lab during this school year. I want to see what everyone can do with this as this is great practice for our upcoming SkillsUSA competition in early December. The Illustrator self-portraits that I've seen so far are very well done. This week I'd like to see everyone finish their digital portraits by Tuesday afternoon. If you're having problems "seeing" the lines in Illustrator, you may want to try this Photoshop Tutorial that allows you to turn a photograph into a sketch: Below is a before/after sample of one that I completed this afternoon. We'll work on this in our theory session on Monday. Once the illustrations are complete we are going to try a new transfer technique. This will require you to print your finished Illustrator file out in color to fit a 8.25" x 10.25" area. These prints will then be chemically transferred to wooden frames. The end product will be displayed in our room and they will be yours to keep at the end of the year. Make sure that you're happy with your portrait before doing the transfer. We will be limited in how many frames we have to work with each year.
I have enjoyed reading your journals every week. These journal entries are a record of your growth in our program and they allow you a chance to ask questions and make suggestions. Dan Berger asked a great question this week in his journal. We'll be researching an answer to the question, "Is digitally-created work art?" Shea O'Neill asked that more choices be made available for project work. I'm supportive of Shea's suggestion, but I have a request. If you want to work on an alternate project during the lab period of our class - you need to send me the details via your journal and let me know that you made a proposal via twitter when you want me to okay the alternate project. Another task that we'll be beginning this week is to do post-production touch up of all of the underclass photo portraits that we took the past two weeks. We'll be working with Photoshop to complete this task. I'll post a how-to video on Wednesday to make sure that we're all following the same workflow with these images. It is going to be a busy in our lab this week. For the past five years, Commercial Art students have had the responsibility of taking portrait images of our students and staff. This week begins the process for the 2012-2013 school year. This week both the AM and PM classes will be creating portraits of all 9th through 11th grade students.
We need to be organized in this endeavor so that our clients have a positive experience and that we end up with great pictures of every student. We'll be using this Google form to manage our pictures. I will work on Monday with those of you who want to be on our photography teams for the remainder of the week. One person needs to be the photographer. Their main responsibility is to evaluate the images that we are getting and working with each client in a respectful and helpful manner. I would prefer that only one person assumes that role for each class period. The photographer's assistant will be helping students sign in with their first and last name, their correct CTE area selected, and put an image number into the slot that they receive from the photographer. Below is our schedule for the week: Monday, September 24th: AM - Criminal Justice, Early Child Care & Health Occupations PM - Auto Collision, CIS, Early Child Care & Health Occupations Tuesday, September 25th: AM - Auto Technology, Carpentry, Culinary Arts PM - Criminal Justice, Culinary Arts, Electronics Wednesday, September 26th: AM - Animal Science, Cosmetology, Electronics PM - Animal Science, Auto Technology, Sustainable Energy Thursday, September 27th: AM - Auto Collision, Sustainable Energy PM - Carpentry, Cosmetology Friday, September 28th: AM - Commercial Art, Engine Technology PM - Commercial Art, Engine Technology Other work we'll be doing this week: Senior Portrait Schedule: we will be working with a database to create a schedule for each of our senior students. I need two upper class volunteers to help manage this important task. Let me know if you're interested. This position is worth 4 page designs in our incentive program. Mobile Project Building: The final due date for this ongoing project is this Friday. I really like what I have seen so far and I'm looking forward to seeing finished work this week. Some skills and ideas you may want to incorporate into your design: Envelope Distortions in Illustrator Creating a coat of arms in Illustrator Class Journal Entries: At least three twitter posts that show your daily progress and one learning journal entry at the end of the week that reviews your week and contains a self-assessment letter grade between A to F. My Dear Students:
If you’re like me, you are counting down the days until we’re back in our lab working together. I’ve missed seeing your smiling faces the past few months and I’m looking forward to the new beginning a school year offers. It’s important to get the last bit of extra rest over these next few weeks as we’re going to be hitting the ground running when August 27th rolls around. Once again, we’ll be taking portrait photos of each student at our school for the 2013 Shield. The physical space of our photo studio has been enlarged, and one of our first efforts will be to sit down and schedule over four hundred-some photo sessions. I’ve been watching quite a few YouTube videos and learning from professionals in the portrait business. We’ll have a few new tools and techniques to help us raise the standard of our work this year. I’d like to get your ideas for how to improve our process, so start thinking about problems we’ve had in the past and how to fix them. I look forward to hearing your input. If you want to get a head start on some of those studio techniques here is a list of videos I’ve been studying myself: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?action_edit=1&list=PLA2DA5C098C16BBF7 Our school is instituting a new uniform policy this year. The color suggestions that you made have been instituted and uniforms can be ordered at our school’s wearable web store that can be found at http://store.apexadv.com/CCpickering/default.aspx?p=viewcat&showpage=7 You will need to order tops (shirts/sweatshirts/fleece) from the web store, but if you’re purchasing pants please be aware that they need to be long dress pants (not denim) in the colors khaki, black or ivory. You can save money by purchasing pants anywhere you wish. The real upside to this policy is that you’re going to get several minutes more time in the morning to sleep – you’ll already know what to wear to school every day. It will just simplify things. We’ll also look a lot more professional every day – and that’s a good thing. If you have questions or concerns about uniforms, please contact me and I’ll try to lend you assistance. Seniors, please start thinking about potential senior projects – try to come up with a terrific idea for a product. I have a couple of leadership positions for this year’s yearbook available – let me know your project ideas and I promise you feedback. I’m looking forward to cooler temperatures and seeing all of you again. Thanks for choosing our program and our school. Mr. Tucker Commercial Art Instructor So far we've taken close to 1000 portrait images of the Class of 2012. Congratulations to the students who have been working so hard on this project - the photos are impressive and well done! The next step is going to require that we all chip in on touching up and airbrushing these images. Below is a step-by-step video that goes over the basic techniques we'll be using for getting this work done. The key concepts are:
I spent Saturday afternoon listening to a professional photographer named Gregory Heisler at a workshop in Philadelphia. Heisler is a tremendously talented artist who is well known for his cover shots for Time and ESPN magazine. He has photographed presidents, rock stars, actors, actresses and millionaires. He is also a teacher and a pretty nice guy.
I'm going to borrow an assignment that he uses to help his students understand how light lands on his portrait subjects. This week's photo theme assignment is monochrome portraits taken with a flash. Shooting in black and white will help you understand how light reflects - that is often hard to see in color shots. I want to see you submit a series of three images where you are changing the placement of the light. Experiment - try using different light sources - I'll be bringing in a flashlight and a couple tungsten lamps on Tuesday. Use the same model for each of your shots and move the lights around to change the composition of your portrait. 9th graders will be finishing up their calendar and t-shirt projects. A reminder to all 9th grade students - a final CTE area choice needs to be made by December 20th. We are one quarter through the school year and I'm happy with our progress over the first quarter. We've worked our way to getting most of the portraits we need for this year's yearbook. We've established a great website that parents and students are using to purchase prints of the work we've done. The positive feedback that I get regarding the quality of the portraits is overwhelming. Special thanks to Heather Knapp and Jake Brams for working so hard on getting great shots and keeping track of the many faces using a Google spreadsheet.
This week's photo theme is monochrome (black and white) images. The finished product will be a photo study created in InDesign. A sample study is shown at the bottom of this post. You will need to post-process these images using PhotoShop adjustment layers (Black & White and possibly Photo Filter). Another project we'll be working on is a four page magazine spread. I would like to see you use images we've been taking in the photo themes for past weeks. This is to get everyone used to placing images and working with text frames in InDesign. Ninth grade students will be finishing their calendar projects this week as well. Two areas we can improve upon is shop attire and getting assignments in by due dates. I will be phasing out extensions over the course of the second quarter - the due date is the due date - late assignments will lose one letter grade for each day that it is late. Deadlines are an important part of being a creative designer and the reality is that extensions are rare in the industry. Photography Challenge
I really like what you all are doing with the photography challenge! Your images show creativity, great imagination and good photographic composition. Many of you are going outside of the theme and prompting ideas for other themes - meaning that you're helping form what we're doing, which is awesome. There is something missing from this exercise and that is taking it to the next level. We are a small community of artists - we need to learn from one another. That means we need to share and discuss our work. That is why I wanted you to send me your images so that we can have a weekly conversation about what you're learning and discovering in photography. The only way we can have this discussion is to bring all of our images together so we can see and discuss the work. I'm going to try another way of getting that to happen on Monday during class. This week's theme is texture. Think fabrics, exteriors of buildings, animal fur or skin, tree bark, etc. - there are many possibilities - be creative. Make sure that your photos are shot before end of class on Friday and submitted. Fototime Site and Underclass Portraits Congratulations to everyone who helped shoot photos of our 9th through 11th grade students. I keep getting positive comments from others in the school who see what you're doing with these photos. You can tell that students outside our program are impressed with your work. I'm happy to tell you that the CAT Pickering Fototime web site is now open for business. When I look at the photos on these web pages I'm amazed and proud of what my students can do. |
Mr. TuckerMr. Tucker is in his 23rd year as the instructor for the Graphic Arts program. Prior to his teaching career he worked in the flexography industry for ten years and in quick printing for ten years. NEED HELP?Weebly Student Log-in Link
PHYS. ED. DAY
AM - Thursdays - 1 PM - Thursdays - 7 HEALTH DAY PM - Mondays - 7 Lake Photo
|