Week 3

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Week In Review: So this is what I got for my book club so far. The left of which I used this mockup and this font. The right I got a picture from pexels. Pretty fun! I did the ZIM! quest and it really clicked for me this time. With inspiration, I made a helper guide for those who don’t quite get what it means just yet. Here is a rough draft of what I mean. The words might be changed, and it’s gunna need some typography, but hopefully it makes more sense to some people. The black text is the tips to working towards the middle ZIM!

Self Guided Learning: Still progressing with Deke’s tutorial, I learned that if you scan a graphic you made that you can trace it in Illustrator. Ok, I knew that so what’s the big deal? I was stunned to find out that if you go over to Photoshop and upsample that image, the tracing results turn out way better! For those who thinks that sounds crazy, the highest he could scan in was 300 ppi so that was all he could work with. If you put that in illustrator, you have to adjust the threshold really high (tracing darker and darker grays) for it to look pretty good. but when you up sample it in Photoshop, you give the algorithm more to work with so you have more sensitivity on the threshold level to really dial it in. And he doesn’t stop blowing my mind, because he is continuing to show me new tips to get the best traced image. Always open the advanced options 😉 And here I was thinking that the trace tool was mediocre. The more I get into this advanced course, the more I see that this program is so powerful!

Week 3 Effort: This week was a good week. I had a fun time even though we were cut a little short on Wednesday. And even though Friday’s short its Odin’s march so no teachers planned to do anything but fun things anyway. I had a seemingly endless amount of quests at my disposal so trying this week was easy! I came in more than 30 min early everyday and still there was more to do. That’s what I really like about the MacLab, like life, you’re never really finished. I still found things to do and worked continuously. I earned Rubric: You gave it your all: A

Week 4 Goal: Next week I wish to make the ZIM! helper even better. I really like to content in the poster and might have to make a video to explain it. Once it is explained, I’m sure it can help many MacLab students understand ZIM!

Long Term Goal: Well I am excited for the POD quests that combine Illustrator and Photoshop, because that is exactly what my long term goal is. My other long term goal needs some waiting on, because I am still awaiting a friend to contact me to help.

Reflection: Woke up today to a gorgeous sunrise. Well actually, I woke up before that. But it was stunning. It has some significance to me because right before the sun rose I decided to really cramp down on my youtube time. Youtube sucks my time up if I’m not careful, and after particularly long sessions I get a headache and don’t feel to well-rounded. Point is, it doesn’t make me feel good so I’m going to simplify my time. I am migrating to a new youtube account (my old one had almost 300 people I was subscribed to, and so much clickbait on my homescreen) and on this new account I will only keep youtubers worthwhile of my time. I will open youtube with a purpose, and not just to blow away a few hours. For a while youtube got to be a problem, where I wouldn’t get stuff done that I wanted to. A night would go by without me even getting near my goals. So now that I have a fresh start, I will be able to continue watching the programs that I like, but will finally be subtracting the nonsense that I used to fill the void with.

Week 2

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Week in Review: So we are back, and I am trying to get back in the swing of things. I am liking my chrome book (although it’s an extra 3 pounds in my backpack). I followed Skocko’s Illustrator tutorials and dusted off my shortcut skills for typography. I also wanted to get back into advanced Illustrator, so I headed over to your friend and mine, Deke. These chapters seem awesome, and I’m excited to get into it. I also love how he calls his videos movies, and his voice is nice to listen to.

Self-Guided Learning: I tried to watch Lynda, and used Deke’s tutorial. I haven’t finished the chapter yet, so I will come in to Saturday School.

Week 2 Effort: I started on the tutorials that I wanted to, after taking Skocko’s refresher. I started coming in early into the MacLab to make up for that extra period I wasn’t able to get. Rubric: You gave it your all: A

Week 3 Goal: I want to come in for the first Saturday School to follow Illustrator tutorials and others maybe. I also want make new desktop pictures. I love the old ones, and now that it’s the new school year we get to redecorate! I also want to make a bookclub poster, and found a behance mockup for it possibly.

Long Term Goal: So the secret goal is on it’s way, and my crowd of creative coders are up to the task. It’s fun to keep this on the DL and see what happens.

Reflection: This week was great. I am having fun in my classes (yea I’m an egghead) and it’s so nice to be in the new building.

Week 1

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Image created in Fractal Machine

Week in Review: I am getting settled into the new MacLab and getting back into schedules. I like my classes (I’m an optimist so it would be hard to not be satisfied). The first day I only had 1 MacLab, so I tried to add another period. None of the classes I take have a period 7, so it didn’t work. Guess I get to show up earlier if I want more MacLab time. Luckily I am assigned to first period, so I can just show up whenever Skocko gets here and continue working until 1st period comes and goes. I was one of the veterans so I went around and help set up blogger and wordpress sites, user accounts, the whole shebang.

Self-Guided Learning:  Since this is my new website, I used this resource. That had quite an amount of code and “don’t do this,” so I also looked at the wordpress.com helper. A lot of it was easy enough just to poke around to make my new blog feel like home. I have to say, it was nice to move away from blogger. It’s all up to the user, but I like wordpress look, even if it is the free version. Besides, google has a bad habit of removing things that a few million users are happily using, so I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. I have 3 blogs and if I take the time to migrate info to all of them there will be no way I could be shut down on all fronts. (Shouldn’t say that too loud but still, you know what I mean)

Week 1 Effort: I tried my best to get my blog up and running. I also tip-toed towards a new and exciting secret goal that will most likely go down in MacLab history if I execute it properly. No I’m serious Mr. Skocko will brag about his students making this. Yea it won’t just be me, I will be getting TONS of help from coders in the MacLab. (The world can always use a good coder, they get the biggest darn projects done beautifully… and all from behind the scenes.) HUGE SHOUTOUT TO CODERS: WE LITERALLY COULDN’T DO IT WITHOUT YOU. Rubric: You gave it your all: A

Week 2 Goal: I want to start out on picking up Deke’s tutorials on lynda.com. I followed some really good basic ones last year, and now I want to continue on to the harder and more in-depth courses. Deke is so professional that there is a seemingly endless amount of content I can learn from him (Yea he is the guy that writes the photoshop bibles… Thousands of pages on the program).

Long Term Goal: My long term goal is to learn Photoshop and Illustrator well enough so I may use them to compliment one another in my workflow. I also have a secret long term goal that I am super excited about. It kept me up late thinking about it, and I think this is the winner. Last year I made songs for bone-health, and over the summer I played UnderTale to see how the plat-former songs should sound like. Let me tell you that game’s music is ICONIC, and I want to make something that good. That was all good, but I am going to have to stray from that previous goal. My secret goal will be hard to do, because it involves so much code. But if I get my buddy Morstix to help me through it, I believe this will go down in MacLab history. Especially if we get it working how I want it to. Big Changes Ahead.