Last post!

The first semester passed and I got a new blog. So this will be my last post here.

The new blog.

Click that. It’s where you will find me now.

Anyway we are starting to Learn On Our Own. I’m supposed to find good resources to work with and learn from. I’ll post them here!

  • This is also a resource I can use (have used) and it will be helpful with patterns!
  • I would  also like to remember when I did this a few weeks ago, and could possible do something of the same caliber on my own. Maybe not do exactly what Teela did, but something that I make up for illustrator resources. Teela also shows how to make them seamless! Her normal pattern video is found here.

Week 18

Imagery:

blur01

Week Review: Week 18 is the week of finals. I don’t have to take english or history finals on tuesday. Instead of playing hookie or being bored in those classes, I’m going to get a note out and come work in the maclab for those hours. I get a lot of MacLab time this week. I saw the finals vid, and want to make my own automation.

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This is the workflow. I copy a vertical selection from that old picture, and make a new doc. Then all I do is click play. It does everything for me, and a 6000×6000 at 300 ppi blur appears before me after it renders. I also made a Horizontal variant that works when I use a horizontal selection. It just adds a rotation before the blur action.

Week 17

Imagery:

wordflourish
I used the font Nickainly and Teela’s PDF to make this.

Week in Review: Tuesday was fun because I did a Teela tutorial. But to be honest this wasn’t my best week in MacLab, per-say. I took a homework pass Wednesday because of history. I want to finish this week with an A so I don’t have to take the final. I’m taking another homework pass (woh, actually using the gold I have acquired) Thursday because my English is 91%… Again, passing this week with an A means no final. Even with buying all this time for work on other classes, I got here early enough that I could still fit in a miniquest called “Plain Sight” (go to MiniDocumentation to see).

Self Guided Learning: Tuesday we got a Teela Tutorial. Well, more of an intro, but since I’m signed up to her email list I got some PDFs from her course that I can use. I’ll post what I learned!

Cheat Sheet: Go here. Or click it in the sidebar.

Week 17 Effort: I was too focused on other classes. Sorry I was distracted! I tried to work what I could. Still got here early! Great, but…

Final Week Goal: I better make a cartoon on finals day. I need a third desktop picture still!

Long Term Goal: The MiniLab is looking good. I need to make my profile. It’s been a while since I released the profile quest and even I haven’t finished it. So I have to make a profile picture and complete my admin profile for other students to read here.

Reflection: That Teela Tutorial? It had more impact on me than I first thought. She said how she would draw flourishes on everything, right? So far I have taken that to heart, and have tried my best at doing the same! I use all the techniques she showed me in the PDF I downloaded. This is all on paper, which is funny because I’ve been stuck in this rut, thinking I have bad handwriting. That is not true, because I am getting good at these flourishes!! So away with negative thinking, I have surprised myself in how good I can really do. It’s funny at first I thought oh this is just another tutorial that doesn’t apply to the MacLab. I let it play anyway because I know Skocko used to work in pen and paper, and I can still get experience from it. After watching and downloading the free beginner lesson, I found I can easily do this in Illustrator and on paper! So that’s what I have been doing. I have followed her rules, and used her ideas to make a simple flourish. I saw what her course would turn into, and that stuff can get complex! But for now I shall practice the beginner tips.

Week 16

Imagery:

adobe-spark

Week in Review: We were asked to do an Adobe Spark post, with text, so I decided to whip up a pic for my instagram. On this instagram is where I post some photo-glitching that I recently started trying out. It makes for some really cool photos, and I’m always happy when it works out just right. I post each pic with some inspirational caption, to make it fun. I encourage you to go check out PureRainBlossom if you want to see my glitch-gallery. Pretty moderny type stuff. I’ve just been glitching photos off my phone, so unfortunately I don’t know the original author of the posts. Wish I could attribute to them, but tagging will have to do. It’s simply been years I’ve had these pics, so the author would be a task to find. I’ll most likely glitch this photo before posting, to keep a running theme.

instaglitch

Now on Wednesday we were all supposed to make a Cheat Sheet for this quest. Mine is on the left sidebar listed under the pages header. It was a quick quest, and useful if I ever want to show off my themed Imagery at the same time. Most likely going to use these same tactics for showing off my square Instagram posts, the glitch theme. Pretty cool! I’m already thinking of doing 3×3 with the Blossom pic I posted above right in the center of the 3×3 grid.

Self Guided Learning: I used this link to mess around in Illustrator. It was extremely fun! (Teela’s Tuesday was unrelated to what I do in the MacLab, so I skipped it this week)

Mirror.jpg

Week 16 Effort: This week was a good week. Along with working on Illustrator, I also worked on quests. Code was fun, and I tried to do the hotdog space. I’ll post the hotdog space when I finish it (I know I can post rough drafts but I don’t like how it’s turning out at the moment). I got here early, as per usual, and recently I noticed I’ve been spacing on collecting minutes. Luckily everything is time-stamped, so the days without time purchased I just counted up from the early bird purchase to find how much minutes I get. I ended up buying a whopping 500 min. Rubric: You gave it your all: A

Week 17 Goal: I still forgot to make a cartoon this week. I ended up making the mirrored image above, which was pretty awesome. There’s another Saturday school so I want to do it then!

Long Term Goal: The MiniLab is awesome. I made a lot of Brainstorm quests, (see MiniDocumentation) so when Brainstorm Members all catch up, the MiniLab will really start to kick off I feel.

Reflection: Thoughts about glitching pictures: I love it. I hope to find out what effects different file types and what not to take out. The more I know the more I can precisely get the effect I want. What I’ve learned so far: PNGs have really nice glitching, effects the whole picture mostly. But what code you take out, you must replace with something. Take out 5 random characters, you better put the same amount back, lest you render the file useless. JGPs are a lot more linear and hardy, you can take out entire sections, shifting the line, since it’s built left to right, top to bottom. Where in the code you change is where in the picture it changes. Colour does change too, but PNGs see more global “flops” of colour, and JPGs just get brighter, darker, or more blue or what not. PNGs like to inverse their colours, kind of a nice effect. GIF images are a combination of both… what you take away, you must add. But however, there is usually no color changes, and linear shifts are more pronounced. Also if you add anything without taking anything away, it makes noise past that point. Lastly, if you take away father down and add a few lines up, it shifts each row a few pixels to make a stair pattern. How to do it: On a mac, make the file a .txt extension, edit in any notepad application, and put it back to the previous file type after editing. On a windows, you can use a free open-source program called Notepad++ to directly edit the file without changing extensions. This way is highly preferred because you can ‘ctrl s’ to see what you did and ‘ctrl z’ if you don’t like it.

Week 15

Imagery:

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Adobe Spark

Week in Review: Monday I had enough time in the morning to import all my pictures into the computer as DNG files. That way, I can practice using Photoshop’s camera raw to its fullest extent. Tuesday, I started up a tutorial for MiniLab, I will be telling the Brainstorm Students how to use Adobe Spark to make quick videos. Wednesday I worked with my Hawaii photos, and started making a line of recurrent, different backgrounds off of the same high-quality photo.

Self Guided Learning: I think Tuesday’s Teela will be a good practice. Deke was nice but I exhausted his tutorials to pretty much anything I’d use. Maybe I missed some tutorials, but it’s too bad our Lynda ran out. I’ve got to stop mentioning that, I do it almost every week.

tuesdaywreath
Teela’s Tuesday Tutorial, making Wreaths for Christmas!

Week 15 Effort: I did really well as always. I have been pushing the MiniLab project, and more with each Brainstorm quest the comes out. I also didn’t forget Illustrator, I still want to cultivate that program. Rubric: You gave it your all: A

Week 16 Goal: Next week I want to draw that cartoon. Better yet, the coming Saturday school.  I’ll get there right at 6:05 because the school has an alarm now and I don’t wanna be the one to set it off. Hah imagine that, “What are you doing kid?” “Oh sorry officer I just wanted to get to Saturday School extra early for more… points.” “Yea, right, kid. Like I’m gunna believe that.” “No it’s true I swear…”

Long Term Goal: I am making MiniLab videos, and I’m so glad! My MiniLab project is really getting underway, especially that me making Brainstorm quests will encourage and help others make quests and things.

Week 14

Imagery:

badges
Badges I made for the MiniLab. For more, see MiniDocumentation.

Week in Review: SO YEA I’M IN HAWAII THIS WHOLE WEEK. Bye. I get to take 3 absences because the plane leaves on Wednesday. This has been planned for half a year, and gosh darn it, I deserve the break. Sure I’m taking 3 days more than other people, but that’s just the way it worked out. We get to have Thanksgiving with my brother who is stationed in Hawaii. It’s going to be really fun. Skocko is lending me a camera so I can take pictures of things. Hopefully I will get a lot of good, usable pictures. My teachers know I’m a good kid, so I doubt they take it personally when I leave for 3 days. They know I work darn hard in their classes, so I’ll get some make up work to do over the break. I get home midnight on Thanksgiving, so I’ll do the homework on Saturday when I’m not extremely tired. That’s the plan at least.

Self Guided Learning: I remembered this tweet from Skocko, and it gave me an idea. What if a book started in one font, and as the book progressed, the font subtly changed as you were caught up in the story. By the end of the book, it would have a completely different font, and a completely different feel.

Week 14 Effort: I left after 2 days so I get that good good are you kidding me. This is a terrible week documentation. Sorry if this terribleness burns your eyes. Just look at other weeks for better words. Rubric: No second effort: C

Week 15 Goal: So I didn’t do anything this week. I need to work hard next week (after the break).

Long Term Goal: I want to draw a cartoon. I don’t know what, but we will find out. Pie.

Reflection: My birthday was on Saturday, so I got a lot of credit in Steam for buying games. Thanks to all my friends who know me so well, getting me Steam money. I’m excited for Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals. Now that I have a lot of credit, I can get a lot of games!

Week 13

Imagery:

cat
OMG it was so satisfying and fun to finish this!!! I “inked and coloured” this off of a picture of a whiteboard drawing. I got a really good style in my drawing, my new (and first) style. There are a lot of rounded corners, and colours blend really well. Shading is fun, all using the Blob Brush, Smooth Tool, and Eraser.

Week in Review: I started the Monday off right. So right. Even better than last week, where I looked at Deviant art for inspiration. This week I kept going with the cat that gave me so much joy to draw. I wish for more pure days where I draw and just let the art form in front of me. This wasn’t my drawing, it was from a girl in my Spanish class, drawing on the white board. I will show her this and I hope she likes it  🙂 CUTE!

Self Guided Learning: This video was helpful from all the new 2017 changes adobe did. I watched a video about Photoshop and its new features. Mr. Odisho has a lot of Adobe tutorials.

Week 13 Effort: Super short week! Wednesday gets cut short and Friday gets cut completely off for Veteran’s day. But my birthday is on Saturday! I always get that free day for my party, even if my birthday is on a weekend. I guess I’m lucky to have my birthday so close to a holiday. I had a fun week with drawing, and tried my best to make it look great. Rubric: You gave it your all: A

Week 14 Goal: I want another drawing! That’s a little bold, considering how long this drawing took me. Ok, at least start one next week.

Long Term Goal: The MiniLab is… Still there. Where I left the ball is where I wish others would pick it up. Writing quests alone is… Daunting. So while I’m slowing putting out quests and slowly growing my MiniDocumentation, I am also wishing to draw more. I’d like to add that to my long term goal. Now that I think I am confident in the style I want, I would like to draw 1 more background by the end of the year. Last year, I made 3 backgrounds which were mockups of my current art at the time. Each is on a virtual desktop, in which I have my Photoshop, Illustrator and Maclab in. So now I need 3 for this year. The first one will be the Umberon I made at first sat school. The second can be the Kitty I just made. The third? I don’t know what to make yet.

desktops

Check this out! All I need is one in the middle, and my 3 desktops will be perfect! It’s funny that depending on where the cartoon is, I will know what desktop I am on. On left is 1st, middle will be 2nd, right is 3rd.

Reflection: This week was good. Super short, but very good. I guess to keep a documentation of time, I will state that the 2016 president was elected. The 45th president of the US, Donald Trump. But past that, this week was relatively normal. It’s my birthday on Saturday (I’ve said that before in this post) and I’m excited for that. The passing of time is pretty quick, huh!

Week 12

Imagery:

turtle

Week in Review: Skocko’s going to be out for the week, and I’m doubting the sub is going to be in the class at 6 o’clock like Skocko. I will just have to deal with my work time being limited to one period this week. I usually come in early enough to get almost a whole extra period of time. I miss having 2 periods… Anyway, Tuesday after Halloween I found out how to up sample a extremely small photo. It’s pictured above. The rest of the week I worked on MiniLab. And hey it’s friday already! (That went fast, huh?) I have 4 tests today, isn’t that fun? I have Spanish (easy review test), English (on every article we read so far), History (I took good notes so I’m prepared), and Math (it’s still algebra one and I remember all of it). So the only hard one is English and I believe I am prepared for that.

Self Guided Learning: I don’t have many links in this self guided learning now that the school dropped my Deke. A disappointment, but hard to be mad when I’m making such a cool thing as the MiniLab. There just isn’t much to link here. Dare I link my DeviantArt again? I added more to my categories, so that’s fun. I linked you to my favourites so you may see what I have collected so far. Hopefully my categories grow, but I added the most to 2d art so far.

Week 12 Effort: After watching the students in my class this week, I think I was the only one really working hard. That sounds arrogant but I seriously was the only one doing what I normally do. It was sad to see people who I thought would work the same slack off. Rubric: You gave it your all: A

Week 13 Goal: Next week I wish to post quests other than Brainstorm. Brainstorm is good but I don’t want to neglect the others.

miniscreenshot03
I did post 1 quest other than Brainstorm, and it’s a real quest that also serves to intro the inteGRITy guild. My question is that if mini gift has a purchase limit of one, can it also be awarded? I think unpurchasable store items may be awarded so I presume it will work too. I asked him and got my answer. There is a checkbox when making a store item to assign it as bonus loot. I made a new store item and will assign it to this quest.

Long Term Goal: Working on the MiniLab is great. I’m writing quests for Brainstorm, and I hope my friends are actually reading the words. I can see Skocko’s frustration now. I write these quests with a purpose and if you just skim read them (yes I am looking at you… you know who you are) then you won’t understand what to do in the MiniLab. Brainstorm is earned, and I do give everyone the benefit of the doubt at first. So help me out.

Reflection: This week was a good week. I got a new car, and getting the parking permit sticker has been a pain. I had to find all the stuff for it, and then I didn’t get to school on time (slept in because of sub). Partly my fault but also just bad luck hah. If anyone reads this they will probably laugh at me because it has taken far too long to do a simple task such as this. I swear I have just been waking up on the wrong side of the bed this week. Regardless, I have been having a fun week because of the lack of homework. That means I get to play more video games!!!

Week 11

Imagery:

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Talk to me to set up an account!

Week in Review: I got the MiniLab posted! Skocko hosted this for me, thank you! Head on over right here, and make an account if you’re interested. Click login and then click register. Sorry its a little confusing to navigate (I’m working on it), but start at “Welcome to the MiniLab” post. Tuesday I got to go to the CTE meeting to represent MacLab. I know Skocko has his… Thoughts…. About CTE, but anyway it was really fun to just talk about what I love to do in here. Some of the people in that meeting were big business people, so it will hopefully inspire them to see my excitement about learning. Wednesday I touched upon the Morgue quest, so I set up a deviant art. I’ll update my favourites with inspiration, and post some of my works in the MacLab while I’m there.

Self Guided Learning: Hmm, I think I should link to deviant art on this one. It was really helpful to go through works. It wasn’t a tutorial or a video, but I still got something from it. It started my week off right, and I think spending time in the early morning scrolling through creativity brought a boost to my own. I had a MiniWriter’s block and didn’t put out any quests for almost 20 days, as you can see in the screenshot below. Then all of a sudden, Brainstorm guild quest kicks off! If that isn’t proof enough, then I don’t really know what did it. Let’s link this too but I need to do it next week.

miniscreenshot01
A screenshot of what I did… the newest 3 Brainstorm Quests were made on the school chrome-books! (Finished a test & made use of my time)

Week 11 Effort: This week was exemplary. I worked really hard on the MiniLab, and it will pick up speed once I keep rolling out even more Brainstorm Guild quests. That will get all the students to work, and start expanding the MiniLab. Rubric: You gave it your all: A

Week 12 Goal: I want to set up my Mandatory Brainstorm documentation, because I am on the Brainstorm Guild in the MiniLab. It’s required to show what you do in the MiniLab for anyone working on it. I have done a lot, and it might end up being a lot to do.

Long Term Goal: The long term goal is going swimmingly. For a bit I didn’t start it, but after I found out how easy it would be for Skocko to host it, that made it golden! It’s going good and I am recruiting my friends to help work on it. Hunter is going to nail the Integrity quests I feel. He is the one who showed me Habitica, so he gets the brainstorm guild in the MiniLab. He will work on posting Integrity quests, and inform people how to use Habitica. Heck, this will be great because then I can do the quests too. I will truly be a student in the classroom I made. And thanks to Hunter’s brother, Forest, and the Game-On team that made it possible for me to make my classroom in the first place.

Week 10

Imagery:

HorizontalLinesBlur.png
I went along with Skocko’s tutorial, and I liked how my “spin” on it turned out. Hah get it, because I used radial blur… heh. Anyway it turned out pleasingly geometric and I was lucky to get pretty colours on this one.

Week in Review: The week started with me reading my friend Trenton’s blog. Mr. Skocko told us to read the blog of the person on top of the leader board. I did, and I’m glad I did because Trenton is doing really well in the MacLab. I remember him last year, and he tried pretty hard to get the hang of it. Now he is doing great! I suggest reading his blog and trying to emulate what he does.

Self Guided Learning: Our Lynda didn’t get refreshed, so I guess I have to find another source. Tis a shame that I can’t follow Deke, but the most worthwhile tutorials were the ones I took last year, the basics. The advanced is fine and dandy work, but maybe not as applicable as the width tool and the blob brush tools to my art. I am enjoying drawing in Illustrator, and if I never learned these tools from him last year, I don’t think my drawings would get nearly as good as they would if I had to figure it out for myself.

Week 10 Effort: I had a good time working on the MiniLab, and I hope that I will make it accessible to all soon. Hey Mr. Skocko can you host my website? That would be so cool because then any student in MacLab, nay, anyone in the world can use my website. You don’t have to figure it out anytime soon because I have so much to write. But all my URL links will be broken once I migrate, so if I migrate soon that would be less cleanup work for me. I hope you can find a way to host! It would make my day. Well, my year if I choose to work on this longer. This week was fun, and I’m proud of my works: photoshopping, and Illustratoring, and even MiniLabbing. Rubric: You gave it your all: A

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I’ll miss my blogger, but I won’t miss all the annoying things that come with it. This wordpress website has more functionality, and this is the free version!

Week 11 Goal: I want to make a new guild in the MiniLab. It’s going to be academia, and I will teach people more about the history of computers. I, of course, don’t know the history, so I will be learning by teaching. I want to explain the acronyms in a couple of quests. I think it’s interesting to learn the origin of these things we use everyday. Like what is a URL? I learned it is from Uniform Resource Locator. I will share this knowledge and hopefully students who buy an academia guild will share my interest in them. My goal next week is also to finish and post a really awesome drawing I’m working on. It was whiteboard art that I took a picture of, and now put it over to Illustrator to make it into a vector and put colour on it.

Long Term Goal: My goal is the MiniLab. I still have the secret treasure hunt if your interested on doing it. It isn’t too flashy, because I didn’t think anyone would find it (at least one person found it and completed it, I watched them). The MiniLab. Well the student is truly going to become the teacher in this one. I will have a class sign up page in my website and anyone may make an account. Stuff I post will be geared toward them. I am thinking I will borrow Skocko’s “MacLab team” idea with the game characters and all, so each type of miniquest I make will be in a different personality depending on what the content of the quest is. The characters will be original, but Skocko gave me the idea to do that.

This is perfect in my view. If I truly want to be a teacher when I grow up (idk yet, I’m 16) this will be the perfect practice. I want to emulate the type of thing Skocko does in order to break the school system. I am the teacher. Technically speaking, teachers can enroll in my MiniLab, for anyone will have the ability to make an account on the website.