So the stance that I wanted to take on this poster project was how the North Korean regime is similar to the Empire from Star Wars and how we should take action against North Korea. Looking at the final draft of my poster, I'm not quite sure my topic gets across as I only have two elements of Star Wars in my poster, and it's not obvious to people who haven't really seen Star Wars. However, my stance is projected in the image of the Imperial symbol being laid with the North Korean flag to show how the two relate, as well as the text which is calling out to the viewers and trying to get them to take action against North Korea.

This was the first digital draft of my poster that wasn't finished. The idea behind this was to take the South Korean leader, Park Geun-hye, and have her call out to the audience to pick up the helmet (Rebel Helmet from Star Wars) and compel them to fight against North Korea. I realized I had to change my poster idea when I came to this point as it seemed extremely plain in color and contrast and also lacked space for text. 

In the final draft of my poster, I tried to take an image of a flag of the Empire and have it cover over the North Korean flag as to show how North Korea is following the Empire's footsteps in its tyranny. While including the original idea from my thumbnail sketches of a torn up flag of the Empire over the flag of North Korea, I also added to the idea since I felt that there was a lack of drama or meaning when the poster was just the flags. 

I thought I did the best in the poster design portion of the rubric as viewers would be attracted to the bright red of flag at first and then move their eyes to the right where the text lay. The text would then bring the viewer down-screen after reading the text and to the left where they would see the images of the soldiers, which would bring them back to the flag eventually. 

Conceptually, the hardest part of this project was choosing an idea that I could take seriously and had many ideas that I could sketch out. I was able to determine that a Star Wars/Korean approach would be the best as I was interested in both topics and could brainstorm a couple ideas easily. 

Technically, the hardest part of this project was finding images that I could use for my project and add to the theme that I was trying to develop. Most images had backgrounds or parts that I didn't want included and I had to remove the parts by copying the image onto a transparent backdrop in photoshop. 

Star Wars Theories and Advertisements

*Note, if you have not watch Star Wars, you will be extremely confused.

An issue that are recently being debated heatedly in the Star Wars fan community is who Rey's father is. Of course they popular theory being debated is that she's Luke Skywalker's daughter. This is the most plausible belief in my opinion although it brings up some questions such as the controversial "falling in love" as a jedi and who would be her mother?

The one of the more insane theories is that Rey is Obi-wan's daughter or granddaughter. This idea in itself is actually one of the craziest ones because by the time that Obi-wan first meets Luke, he's already at the age of 35-40 years old. If this is true, Obi-wan would have most likely already would have married someone and had a child. However, then where would his child have been all this time if his child wasn't Rey? Rey couldn't be his daughter due to the age gap between her and Luke, nor could she be his granddaughter because then where would Obi-wan's child be?

The other issue I would like to bring up is related to Star Wars and includes my favorite music genre, K-Pop. While I loved to see K-Pop groups such as EXO performing songs about Star Wars to increase its influence (which I realize is a controversial topic within itself), the songs themselves don't seem to have any relation to Star Wars besides the equipment used in the production of the music video. I'm sure that many other K-Pop fans and like-minded people have felt the same.

2)

1) My self symbol concept was "student athlete". I believed that this was one of the best ways to portray two important parts of my life; my school and after school life. Because I start my day off in school and change out of my clothes I chose to show the transformation between student and athlete through a change in my clothing and the background.

3) Originally, I wanted to show this transformation through photography and through my actual change in clothing and a change in backgrounds. However, I realized that this transformation would be too sudden and that there would not be enough layers/frames. On top of that, it would be difficult to make sure that the angle was the same and that the lighting was similar, to prevent horrible transitions. So instead, I realized that it would be much easier to draw and color my own frames and images to complete my gif. In hindsight, everything was much more difficult due to the fact that I was going to change the background but forgot, making me go back and fix everything frame by frame. Also, I realized that my transformation was too sudden and may be too sudden even now, but I had added frames to slowly change the color from blue to black for the shirt and from black to white for the pants.

Walking Foward and in Reverse GIF

HADOUKEN!

2) In respect to the Street Fighter reference, I had to name the portrait transformation "Hadouken!".

1) The concept behind my portrait transformation was fantasy in reality. I chose a photo that was taken by my dad's friends where they were taking the infamous image of Ryu's Hadouken from Street Fighter, the video game. The photo was taken on a mountain where one jumped up and seemingly tried to touch his toes, while the other placed is hands together as if making something shoot from his hands.

3) I'm somewhat happy with the results of the portrait transformation. From my perspective it looks good but at the same time it feels as if it was missing a lot in the background, where I might have been able to add more without making it too chaotic.

5) I created several layer masks within my project. They helped shaped the project into what it is now. I took several images that I had on my phone and one from the internet (the space one) and created masks for most of them to hide details that I didn't want. By clicking on the "create layer mask" option at the bottom of my left sided layers bar, I was able to hide pixels of the images that I had taken and included into my project. I mainly used the "magnetic lasso tool" and the "paint bucket" tool to color in the layer mask black to hide the details of each image I didn't want, for example, the entire scenic background of the original image. The finer parts of each image, for example, some awkward parts of the fire, I used the "brush tool" to go over and hide.

My Mini Lesson 4 photoshopped image. Looks a little strange but it was fun to produce.

My Musical Letter "T" Letter Reflection

1) For the letter project process, our entire class had to brainstorm 20 thumbnail sketches that had a theme and could be represented in the shape of our letter, in my case my letter was a "T". I had come up with various ideas from time to trumpets. We received feedback from classmates that haven't seen our work since they would be able to decide which images looked the best and what concept seemed to be really strong.

After our brainstorming, we took the best three (or two) concepts and began to expand on them, meaning going into greater detail on a larger piece of paper. I began to explore the kinds of drawings that I could create about music and my other concept in the form of three music drafts and one of the other concept. I was very determined to create a "T' using my idea of music because I have a deep passion for love. However, the two existing half-paged drafts that I had weren't the best to represent my letter and I eventually came up with a new one after struggling.

After careful consideration and thought, I decided that I would try to further develop my idea of a music conductor with music notes floating over his head to form a "T". I began to sketch an image of the conductor standing behind a podium holding sheet music with music notes floating over his head. The conductor was created with the help of cartoon and drawn references while the music notes were created from what I remembered from my days of reading and playing piano. When I seemed satisfied with my sketch on my final, I decided to begin coloring in.

As a result this was the final product with color. 2) To fully visualize my concept of music, I created music notes and a conductor which are well know to represent music. 3) The most challenging part of this project to me was trying to find a way to figure out how to fill in the blank space that I had left around my letter. I wanted to put the conductor in a spotlight, represented with the yellow coloring that I had done around him and the music. 4) I feel somewhat satisfied with my project as it indicates what letter I was trying to display, albeit it is very obvious. Not only that but the drawing and colors themselves aren't too bad. 5) However, I do feel that I should have added something else because I have a lot of negative space within my final product. Another thing that I would have fixed is the outlining of the musical notes and lines. Although I don't regret outlining my work to make that specific part stand out more, I should have used a thinner marker to draw the lines so that it wouldn't seem so sloppy.