Tuesday, May 5, 2009
• I used Adobe Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Fireworks to create my final project website. I first started by learning how to use the CSS/ div tag tool to create many areas for my text and pictures. Then I started just learning the laguage of html and how to change the font, color, and position of my words. However, I later found out that I would have to use pictures if I want a fancier font on my website because not all computers support fonts. So, I then had to open up photoshop to create an image of the text that I would be using with the designated font already in place. That way I can take a full detour of the confusing font changes if I’m on another computer. I first starated by using a text box, then changed the font, color, and size with the options tool. Then I saved the image as a jpeg and dragged the image into one of my div tags already in my dreamweaver page. However, I started having difficulties seeing my website and found out why because my web page did not find the source of my pictures. Next, I ended up learning that I had to upload the image onto a photo gallery. I choose tinypic.com because it was an easy website to upload to. After uploading, I found the words “source” in my html code and changed the orginal location to my uploaded webpage on www.tinypic.com. However, after going through all the difficulty, I created another page of my website using photoshop. I first started by dragging a picture that I thought to be art and put it on the new webpage. Then I used the gradient tool to create my background. Next, I used the rounded corners shape tool to create boxes. Lastly I typed my text using the text tool. After all that, I had to create the hyperlinks using fireworks. I opened up my jpeg image and used the rectangular hotspot tool to link all my website pages together. Lastly, I exported my image as a htm file so it could be viewed on the internet. However, this did not go according to plan and as a result I had to work with photoshop to further develop my webpage. Then I would export into iweb in order to create a website because I was never able to get dreamweaver to work. As a result, I published my website in iweb.
• I choose to work in Adobe Dreamweaver because I wanted to learn how to make a professional website using professional equipment. It wouldn’t feel the same if I had to do a website using iweb because iweb had all the basic templates to choose from and everything is there for you unlike dreamweaver where I had to investigate every single thinProxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0
I wanted to do from creating div tags to changing fonts. Everything had to be researched so I could properly excute the task at hand. However, if I were to just try and work dreamweaver without any research I would have endless possiblities because the code has infinite possible ways to edit and only one way is correct. I then started using photoshop to design more pages because photoshop is more manageable application to use for being creative. I had all the tools that I needed to create the webpage I wanted. Fireworks came hand in hand when I decided to use photoshop because I had to turn my photoshop page into and html page somehow and this was the answer. I choose the color blue and yellow because I wanted to have something that matched together and I also wanted to have a cohesive whole with my colors. That way the art I choose, would be interesting to look at. I decided to have a valentines picture that fit my definition of art since it’s almost Valentines Day. The picture was well presented, has a thoughtful image that can get me thinking about what she is thinking. Then I choose the picture of the man wondering by the tree. It gets me thinking about how eas life could be and also how challenging it is. It made me really think about what I wanted to do and so I thought I would share this piece on my website.
• My website builds upon this one website I found that talks about what art is from my investigation to find my own defintion. This website can be accessed on one of my older posts. I also built my website style after all the myspace and facebook artists that use photoshop brushes to create many creative and unique patterns using simple brushes for beatiful pictures. I thought that would be a great idea for my site and decided to create my own version by doing the same style. My website will build on the community of art websites because I will be giving my opinion from a teenage perspective. I also helped the photoshop brush artists by show casing such art as part of my style on my website.
• First, I orginally tried using Dreamweaver to create my website, but that didn’t really work out because things kept on getting complicated with the ways that pictures kept on dissappearing and not showing up when I need it to. As you can see in my blog, I kept changing the way it looked until I finally thought that the red font and color was the best. However, I decided to change my style and go to photoshop to create my image. I tried making a webpage using Art and Not Art tabs, but decided that showing things that aren’t art on my website would not be productive. That’s when I decided to put only art that fits my definition and then have a forum discussion debating over. Next, I had to decide what kind of art I would like to put on my site. I orginally wanted to put the mcdonald’s rap on, but thought that I should put pictures first because music is a much grander discussion so I would leave it for a later time. Then for my pages, I thought it would be cool to just leave it blank to showcase my work and only work, but I was told it looked too plain for far too many people, so I ended up decorating my picture pages.
• I think that I did a good job on my cover page to show my meaning. I used one of the brushes that made a big circle to show how I want people to focus on the chinese character to see what I’m thinking. If people don’t know chinese, then people would start wondering what’s speical about that one character. As a result, there would be a mysterious feeling with some happiness if they knew what I was talking about. Then the peaceful colors and landscape of both pictures will have a soothing feeling with all the leaves and shapes.
Point of View
• My wesite shows that art has to have a meaning or at least makes people wonder what the pieces of art are talking about. The piece of wonder art displayed on my webstie shows that I want people to think about each art piece especially about the meaning. The piece about Valentines could be good or bad because not everyone is happy about Valentines Day coming this year, so it makes you really reflect upon what has happened this year to make you happy or unhappy. Lastly, my title page with the word smile or happy centered around my art makes one wonder if they or are happy, or if you do not even know the meaning of the character, it’ll make you wonder what the character is saying.
• My definition of art is that art has to make someone wonder and think about what is happening in the piece one is looking at. Art also has to be in a nice presentable manner and can’t look like it was done in a couple of minutes. Art can not be something slapped together in a couple of minutes or copied someone else’s work. It can’t be taken off of google and call your own.
Context and Connection
• I looked at a website based upon what art is and is not. The author says that art pervade our society, shape it, change it, and make us ask that most basic of questions: what is art? Art has to be important to communication and culture. The author gave lots of evidence that supported their argument by giving many different pieces of art. The author gave examples like the Mona Lisa, David, Amida Nyorai, and The Sistine Chapel to show the different cultures there are in art. No one would have known about the art style people had back in the 1500s. If there weren't art buildings like The Partheno and The Horyu-ji, people would not have found out the wonders of the Architects of the past where there were many creative artists. The underlying belief the author probably had was that society learns from all the art that is preserved throughout the ages. It teaches people about culture and tells about history. I think as long as it teaches something about culture or history, the author would consider it art. I never thought about art as in teaching history and culture. I completely forgot that people use art to teach. I learned that art can be used to tell a story for future audiences. It surprised me that the author said that art can shape a society and once in a while I guess its true because it can teach us about their culture and influence the future. The next piece looked at was of a dog made of money. I do not think this picture represents art at all because it did not evoke any of my emotions. A dog covered in money doesn’t represent anything to me because it’s just like creating a dog. It is art in a way that he is being very creative, but it is not the way I see art. It has to also have a theme or message which the image does have. It has the theme of money to me. I don’t know if the artist is trying to say that a dog is worth a lot of money or something, but I guess that’s an artist’s opinion and not mine. So, he does meet the communication part. Maybe he is trying to say his dog that died or something and is worth a lot of money. It is a tribute to him with his dog tag used in his art. This dog art piece also got me thinking a lot about what he was trying to say and got me thinking a lot. Was he trying to tell us how much he cared about his dog or was he just trying to make a very expensive art piece? The last piece I looked at was a youtube music video of McDonalds. I think art is anything that is made using creativity which includes rap. In the video below, it took a lot of creativness to come up with such rythmes and thus will be included in my definition of art. All artists, whether you're painting or using pastel art to those who make digital art using photoshop, they all have one thing in common which is the ability to get their creativeness out into the open with what they do. It is the same for music except they're using words instead of pictures and their voice instead of markers. My definition of music includes all kinds as art. It includes those who just lay the guitar to the rock bands out there. From Elvis in the past to the next Beyonce of the future. All music is considered art to me. My website was based entirely off of the art that I saw from these three pieces of art. My website was built from the idea I saw from my investigation #3. That’s where I got the idea of creating a webstie for art to be seen. Next, I thought I would have to find pieces of art that would envoke people’s emotions unlike the money dog that I saw. So when I was choosing the picture, I had to avoid things that are plain and boring. Next, I wanted to put music on my website, which I consider art, but I never got the music to properly work on my webstie using html.
• Based on my final exploration of art the characteristics that art needs to have are neatness, pleasant, and mysterious because I think art should be something that has time invested into the piece and has to be nice looking and not all messed up like people know you messed up, but didn’t feel like fixing it. It also needs to be mysterious because otherwise people won’t be thinking about your piece. I ensured that my piece was mysterious because not all people know chinese, which would get people to start thinking about what the character I have on would mean. I made my website pleasant and neat by trying the best to my ability to smoothe out the pieces of art I choose to be featured on my website and also made the design nice looking.
Reflection
• To make my final project I first went through the planning stage of what really is art to me? I never really thought of art that way before. All I’ve heard of before was art class and etc, but never really answered that question myself. So, I started off by doing my assignments and investigating what art is. I started with a music video and thought to myself if this is art or not. I concluded to myself that music is art because you have to be very creative in order to produce a song and then add the video to it takes even more practice. Then I just searched up art on google which turned up a picture of a dog made of money. After viewing this picture, I thought that art had to have a meaning to it like songs have meanings beind every lyric or beat. Then I wanted to see a vast collection of art which lead me to an art website that had many different pictures of art. This hit me hard by telling me to create one of these websties so that would result in giving the world my definition of art because they can view many examples of it. I started by thinking I would want to create something I liked like my favorite video game,so I wanted to create a Kingdom Hearts themed webstie. However, I thought that would be too biased and as a result I then changed my idea into just art and that was when I learned of brush art which is very creative and can be crafted into one with great meaning. That is when I started out my final design. I then got ideas from Louis and Peter telling me to add more designs to my pages because they started out plain. They also told me to create more emphasis on my chinese character because that was my hidden meaning and as a result became what the website is now.
• The tools and techniques that I used to create my website was Adobe Dreamweaver. I first started by watching a tutorial about using the CSS tool to open a new div tag for pictures and text to show up on my website. Then I tried it myself and created my own div tag square on an empty html page on Dreamweaver. I then added a picture by uploading onto tinypic.com and inserting it into my html code using the copy and paste tool inside the quotation marks for the image code. Then I created another div tag using the css tool to add music by adding the music track to insert into the embed src. After playing with Dreamweaver for a bit, I learned another bit of a trick that Ted taught me how to do which invovles using photoshop. I first started by deleting the layer called background to have a see through back ground. Next I added five boxes of my title page for url links by using the cornered rectangle tool on photoshop. Next, I used the text tool to insert the text that I wanted. Then imported the image that I scanned from my calligraphy classes I have at chinese school. Then I used the brush tool to create a background design for my chinese character and put more emphasis on it as well. After I finished, I used the program Adobe Fireworks to create my page into a webpage. I used the rectangle hotspot tool to make urls of each box that I wanted as a link. Then I exported webpage as a dreamweaver document which created my website.
• Warm: theme/ color is good
the representation of using the door and key
Cold: make the picture look like its not just pasted on
I agree with the feedback because I am still struggling on finding out how to properly function using dreamwearver. I'll need to show more ways using tools of dreamweaver to show that I have tried to master the application. In order for me to achieve proficient on this project, I must first meet the standards of using more than a couple of tools on dreamweaver. Then I must better my technique to make my work look more professional I did a decent job on my reflection because I was able to achieve proficient on some of the points, but I need to challenge and propel my work form questions from peers which I will do from this critique. I also need to evaluate my work using emotional responses. In order for me to fully meet proficient, I need to create another page to express my hidden meaning in my artwork.
• Warm: good use of theme/ color that is present on every page
Consistant theme
Discussion place
Well organized
Simple and user friendly
Cold:maybe add more images
Descriptons are pretty general
Overall astheic look could be improved
Process
• One of the art pieces I viewed while working on this project was a picture of a dog statue made completely of money. I do not think the art piece of the money dog represents art because it did not evoke any of my send any thought of emotion to me. A dog covered in money doesn’t represent anything to me because it’s just like gluing money together in a shape of a dog. There is no emotion to money. It is art in a way that he is being very creative, but it is not the way I see art. It has to also have a theme or message, which the image does have. It has the theme of money to me. I don’t know if the artist is trying to say that a dog is worth a lot of money or something, but I guess that’s an artist’s opinion and not mine. So, he does meet the communication part., but not in a very effective way because I didn’t get the message. Maybe he is trying to say his dog that died or something and is worth a lot of money. It is a tribute to him with his dog tag used in his art. This dog art piece also got me thinking a lot about what he was trying to say and got me thinking about if art has to evoke any emotion. Was he trying to tell us how much he cared about his dog or was he just trying to make a very expensive art piece? Another piece of art that I viewed during this project was a rap about McDonalds. I think art is anything that is made using creativity, which includes rap. This rap made me think about whether or not poem, books, and plays a form of art. In the video below, it took a lot of creativeness to come up with such rhythms and thus will be included in my definition of art. All artists, whether you're painting or using pastel art to those who make digital art using photoshop, they all have one thing in common which is the ability to get their creativeness out into the open with what they do. It is the same for music except they're using words instead of pictures and their voice instead of markers. My definition of music includes all kinds of music such as classical, rap, and pop as art. It includes those who just play the guitar to the rock bands out there. From Elvis in the past to the next Beyonce of the future. All music is considered art to me. Even though my least favorite kind of music is probably rap, I still consider it art because they have to create the beats and think off the top of their heads in order to match the beat as well as make it rhythm. My favorite kind of music would probably be the kind that is like the ones sang in a choir. I would consider that art as well because of how they have to think and be creative with their voice in order to change tones. Both kinds of music will qualify as art because of the creativeness used to create the music and it also takes a whole lot more creativeness to make the presentation appeasing too. From the many pieces of art that I saw in the past couple of weeks, one of the key qualities of art is for it to be creative. Without creativity, there won’t be many engaging pieces of art for people to view. You can’t be creative if you just copy someone else’s piece of art. It has to be your own unique style for art to be creative. You have to add your own flavor into the mix of all the different styles for art. What is not art you may ask? Well, art is not copying something someone else did and call it your own. That is not art because the artist did not put any creativity into making the piece. The artist just found a piece of art they found interesting and slapped it onto their own piece of paper. Another valuable trait for art is that it has to be well presented. Art cannot truly be considered “art” in my case if the piece is all broken down piece of paper that is going to be half painted or if the singer forgets the lyrics to his/her song. After finally building a solid definition I wanted to create a website based off of one of my favorite games, but realized that this would not meet my own definition because this would only be about one form of art when a website is suppose to show all forms of art to the audience.
• One of the most hearbreaking setbacks during the course of this project had to be publishing my website. It was hard andoutragous. I had no clue how to publish it using dreamweaver and when I did, either pictures would be missing or I was forbiden to access my own website! I temporary fixed the problem when I asked Peter for advice on publishing the site. He helped me by telling me to publish a folder called test and then dropping my html file into that folder in sites on my server. That seemed to have fixed the problem until I created more pages which turned from bad to worse. I now have no intro page nor do I have any other page up on the site. That is when I needed Mr. Benoza to help me because everything turned forbidden and will be starting that whenever he is not busy…
• I first got feedback from Peter when we did the warm and cold chart. He told me to to make my pages blend in more instead of a picture pasted in from google. That is when I decided to try to learn how to properly use the blur and burn tools together to make it look like the image is part of the background. The blur was to try and take out the edges and the burn was to darken the sides so it won’t look bad to the viewers. Next, Louis told me to decorate the background more and put some emphasis on the chinese character. That was when Ted talked about photoshop brushes so I decided to make my art based on the photoshop brush style. Then when I had a finished product, I had Sheryl look at my finished product to give me final feedback and told me to put a glow around the pictures of art I wanted to display. Lastly I talked to Ted about my chinese character and my brush pages who told me to put something to make the character “smile” glow, but I didn’t like how that turned out and decided to keep it as is. ♥
