WEBSITE

http://students.smcm.edu/kbaier/index.html

Natalia Gonzalez Requena

              I had the pleasure of listening to Natalia talk about her art. She was energetic and humorous. She grew up outside of the U.S. as she had an accent. Her art was different then any art I have seen before. Mainly for what she focuses on. She focuses on experience through three main aspects; body, time, and space. I can tell she really enjoys what she does for a living in the way she becomes  immersed in her work. Her artwork captures movement is many forms. and how time can change your perception of a certain space that is occupied. She also likes focusing on the moment as it is filmed. She wanted to see how the orientation of different objects, particularly a string and a rock and how the shadows change due to time. She showed us a film she created capturing these moments of time and space. One was in a cave with the random placement of lights. Then she proceeded to create a pattern with the lights. The shadows created an interesting view on nature.  Most of her artwork deals with "recordings" and she says they are made mainly through formulation, removal, documentation, indexation  response, direction, alignment, projection, orientation, connection, reflection, and movement. She says she works with mostly environmental things because it allows her to connected on an aesthetically level. Some of the things she works with are; buckets, lights, cameras, sound, tape, chalk, hallways, walls, rooms, string, house, rocks, street, furniture, sand, and mirrors. She likes connecting with the art because artwork is not all about the work itself it is also about the impact the art makes upon people and the artist.
        I enjoyed her concepts about her work more then her artwork herself. Her videos were very disillusioning and not in a good way. I feel as though you need to be there in order to appreciate her artwork more. I like how she has three main aspects and really tries to grasp them. People do not really thing about space, time, and body as a thing that needs to be examined more. I would like to go to one of her galleries in the near future before I really get an understanding on her work. In addition, her exhibits are normally filmed because she feels that there is viewer, artwork bond that should be understood more. Another thing I really respected about Natalia was she was a girl from humble means that became successful because of her passion for trying to understand the unknown.

Assassins Creed

Outside Art lecture!

            I went to listen to a speaker speak about Assassins Creed and how they go about creating the game, unfortunately they stayed away from the creation of the graphics because it was a history professor discussing the game. Anyways, I learned some interesting information about this game and definitely have a lot more respect for the creation of it.

            Apparently they use historical background in the creation of the characters and battlegrounds, which is really neat. Since they didn’t discuss too much about the art ill just name some interesting facts about the creation of the game. They had this rule called “10 second rule” where the creators of the game had 10 seconds to search Google and whatever historical facts they found they felt they should put it in the game. Another thing we talked about was whether or not George Washington had a British or American accent in real life because in the game he was given an American one, but apparently some people think that it depended on whom he was with. He tended to use a British accent to impress important people.

            He was really secretive about a lot of things, which is understandable, but a little disappointing. All in all the graphics of a few clips they showed where so realistic that it was a bit scary. After learning about animation in class and realizing the level of difficulty I respect the art so much more, even if I don’t completely enjoy participating in those types of video games.

Reaction post

As I read the Aito Acconci's reading, I particularly liked the paragraph that broke down how public space is/becomes defined. Aito breaks it into two categories. Space that is public and a space that is made public. A place that is public is where the public gathers freely because it has the freedom to do so. The second is a place that is made public because of mere fact they don't have the right to be there so the public will change it by a riot or a strike. The whole idea of private and public space is fascinating and in the end do we really have private space? I do not think so and it is scary. Especially with increasing technology.

Artist Blogg # 5

 Nick La was born in Vietnam in 1981, but currently resides in Toronto, Canada with a pug and a shorkie. He graduated from Humber college in Toronto. He is trilingual in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin.  specializes in web design and illustrator. He focuses mainly on designing stock icons, WordPress themes, illustrations, and CSS websites. He is the creator of the popular blog Web Designer Wall, Themify, IconDock, and Best Web Gallery. You can find his work in various places including: Computer Arts, Web Designer, .net Magazine, Practical Web Design, Digit, and Web Design Index.

 As I look at Nick La's work I see personification of his style in each web design or icon. His style is very artistic and likable. His choice of working in illustrator is intelligent because you have more freedom of what you can produce. The general theme of his work has two patterns one pattern is to have a detailed background paired with a simplistic title. For example, in Web Designer he has a very detailed background, but the title is very simplistic otherwise it would be to much. The contrast is very important because it would not be anesthetically pleasing to the viewers to have detailed on top of detailed. The second pattern is the exact opposite having a more detailed title paired with a simplistic background as seen in his website for Anika Japanese restaurant. One artistic style I also noticed is he selects a few colors and sticks tho them throughout the design. This creates an anesthetic feel and makes the viewers more inclined to like the page.

 In addition to his website designs he designs icons. I find this very interesting because I never take the time to notice the development of the different types of icons. I find myself just clicking them on my iphone or ipad and go on my merry way, but these small icons take teams to create and is very time consuming.

 I choose Nick La because I like how he uses illustrator to create his backgrounds for a website as it makes the website more artistic. Also now that I have had the opportunity to use the different programs I can relate and respect how challenging it is to create art in the different programs.  

http://ndesign-studio.com/portfolio/web 

Logo Mash-Up

Artist blogg #4

Helen Huang or otherwise known as CQcat was born in China then later moved to the U.S. and is now residing in Los Angeles. Her original life path was to become a lawyer, but that was obviously changed as she now is a well known vector artist. She uses her vector skills for fashion illustration, editorial design, and character designs. Currently, her full time job is designing Ads for an interactive Ad agency in LA. In her free time she enjoys designing dresses for red carpet Oscars as well as weddings.
      Her artwork has a continual theme of accentuation of the eyes and detail of the clothing. She also keeps a simple background to help the viewer focus more on the clothing she designed. Also the simplicity draws you into the figures eyes. At first glance I always notice the eyes because Helen uses vibrant eye shadow along with dark thick strokes. Having huge eyes creates an illusion of an innocent or sweet human being and also gives a cartoon feel. Big eyes can be used as a way to express emotion and I see that in her artwork as well as some of the eyes are red and some are colorful. Another common trait in her work is the dark strokes in the hair. In addition, each picture has a hair accessory to fit the clothing Helen designed. Her thick and simple strokes in the hair also help bring the viewer to the figures eyes. Her artwork also has a few colors throughout the picture, but the colors have various shading and lighting to make it have a more realistic affect.
  One of the reasons why I picked her artwork was because of the way she put a lot of empathises on the eyes and I for one like eyes as they can tell so much into what someone is feeling. Also eyes are beautiful. In addition to the eyes, her clothing design is so simplistic and adorable.  Her artistic style will be similar to mine as in thick hair strokes, detail of the clothing, and relatively simplistic colors.

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