Under Camera Artwork

This was a pretty easy going week. I got to try out a few of the workshops the art school has available. As well as finishing my model and learning more about the process of designing for the student magazine.

Last week I finished my model. Etching the design into acrylic using the laser cutters. This week I got my hands on a strip of LED lights to finish off my model. So with acrylic, you can shine light into the plastic. Any etched parts of the acrylic will light up when a light is passed through. I bought a cheap set of LED lights on Amazon and figured out a way of glueing the two together so my model would light up.

One massively important thing I learned this week is that I cannot be trusted around super glue. The number of times I nearly glued my hands to the model, or glued my fingers together, is way higher than it should be. I’ve never really used super glue before so I wasn’t expecting it to stick straight away. Fortunately, I got my model finished and didn’t glue any limbs to it in the process.

The next step was taking photos of my model. I knew this was going to be the trickiest part of the process. The thing with acrylic is it’s reflective. I couldn’t photograph it on a white background because the camera would be quite visible. So I had to photograph it on black. Hence the LED lights.

The art school has a photo studio available to use, and since it was my first time using it there was also someone available to help take the pictures. This person was a professional photographer and was able to get some really good pictures of my model.

I wasn’t entirely happy with how the image came out. But now I know the right settings to use on the camera I can book the photo studio to take my own pictures.

INDESIGN TUTORIAL

This particular week I was also able to attend an InDesign workshop run by members of the design team for the student magazine. I’ve used InDesign a number of times in the past but this was still really useful. It was also a good way to learn the full process of designing an editorial spread for the magazine.

Honestly, I’m both excited and terrified about this. I love doing these sorts of projects. I loved doing the David Bowie publication at college. But this is different because these are going to be published in an actual magazine. So there is some amount of pressure for it to be good. Fortunately, everyone on the design team is lovely so I don’t think there will be any problems.

THAT’S ALL FOLKS

I can’t believe this is the fifth post in this art school series. I’ve been at university for five weeks now and I’m amazed at how easy the transition has been from college. I was really apprehensive before starting because I knew it was going to be vastly different. But it’s been fine and I’m really enjoying my time here so far.

MORE IN THIS SERIES

3 Comments

Aimer Boyz

March 30, 2019 at 3:20 pm Reply

The model looks pretty good against the black 🙂
Glad to hear University is working out for you !
- BluChickenNinja
  
  May 18, 2019 at 8:04 pm Reply
  
  Thanks!
Dan Antion

March 30, 2019 at 10:18 pm Reply

K don’t get to use it much, but I love working with InDesign.