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. 

Cho! My name's Alexander Kim and welcome to my first blog. I'm half-korean and half-chinese and go to Millennium High School. I'm a senior who's on the varsity baseball and fencing team and lives on Staten Island, effectively killing any hopes of doing something after school with my friends.

During my summer there were many memorable events but the most memorable ones are with family and friends. I spent my time at a dinner (at a restaurant known as Zero Otto Nove) with my parents and other relatives where there were several delicious dishes. I would undoubtedly go back to the restaurant for more food and their delicious Nutella Calzone and Nutella Pizza dessert. 

Shortly later, I traveled down south with some other family members to Myrtle beach, South Carolina where we went to the beach and pool to enjoy ourselves. We all tried a hand in boogie boarding, even the five year old girl that had traveled down with us. It was cool to see how far I could go riding one wave back to the shore. 

While down in Myrtle beach we decided to go mini golfing. Of course some trash talk was spoken and made what was the supposedly friendly game of family mini golf into a full-on competition of mini golf. While I'm not too terrible at golf, I ended up losing terribly to my dad and uncle. Regardless, I still had a lot of fun while we played.