I redid the assignment I did a couple of weeks ago that featured Garfield and a subway mashup. I decided to stay within our theme here so I decided to use an 80s cartoon character. I went with Mickey Mouse. He was huge back then and still is today. I took an image of him … Continue reading “Mickey Mouse Wants YOU to Buy Flowers.”
The reason I chose to use the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is because my older brother, born in 1987, loved TMNT. The cartoon was very popular in the 80s and in the cartoon they turtles love pizza so that is how I came up with the idea!
I chose Garfield because he is an 80s cartoon and to satisfy our 80s requirements. And also because this picture was just too perfect. He’s got a huge sub, and Subway is a great advertisement, its perfect! I hope you enjoyed it! I enjoyed making it.
For my fourth design assignment, I chose to do the “Advertisement Using a Cartoon Character” prompt. I decided to count this one as the assignment worth 4 stars or more!
Growing up, I was absolutely in love with Disney Princesses. My favorite princesses has got to be: Ariel, Rapunzel and Jasmine! For this design, I picked Rapunzel. I felt like she would be the perfect fit as an advertisement for a hair conditioner. My goal was to use Rapunzel hair as an example to promote this anti-breakage, strengthening hair conditioner because of her strong, silky hair. In the Tangled movie, she was seen jumping around and wrapping her hair around the ceiling so she could swing around the room. This shows how strong, even durable, Rapunzel’s hair is.
To create this edit, I first looked up a simple photo of a bottle of conditioner. I wanted to find a bottle that went along the lines of hair strengthening, that way I was able to use Rapunzel. For the photo of Rapunzel, I looked for a photo of her hair in flying swirls, or just her holding her hair. The photo I used already had a transparent background, which made it easier to edit onto the conditioner bottle.
I took the two photos and transfer it to the Adobe Photoshop Mix, I made the bottle photo as the bottom layer and the Rapunzel photo on top. I decided to cover the Pantene logo and put Rapunzel over it. Under the name title, I decided to paste on a small catchphrase, to enhance the advertisement. I went to the Phonto app to add the text in. I settled with the catchphrase, “If Rapunzel can have strong, silky hair, you can too!”. I wanted to add onto the Disney theme by making the font cursive and fancy. I used the Baskerville Italic font and I changed the color to a pastel purple. This way the catchphrase will match the Disney aesthetic, as well as Rapunzel’s dress.
Overall, I wanted to make the advertisement geared towards kids, or Disney lovers in general!
I completed the Advertisement Using A Cartoon Character assignment because I thought it’d be interesting to create an ad after analyzing billboards. I decided to use Popeye as my example because the only way my parents could get me to eat spinach when I was little was by reminding me that Popeye got big and strong because of it.
I really like the way this turned out. I replaced Popeye’s actual spinach can with Del Monte spinach because I was able to find a picture of that on the internet. The way the add turned out is really cool and I think it’d be a good way to promote a better lifestyle by people eating more veggies. We should use it as a billboard!
This is my third design assignment and is assignment that had to be 4 stars or more. The reason why I chose this assignment other than it being 4+ stars is because I thought it would be fun to take characters from one of the cartoons that I used to watch all the time when I was little and use them to advertise a product. I was able to think of multiple ideas for this assignment, but I ended up choosing to use characters form one of my favorite cartoons when I was little, Rugrats.
I was able to make a Huggies ad using Tommy Pickles and Chuckie Finster. I thought they would be perfect for a diaper ad because they are very popular babies/toddlers that wear diapers. A lot of kids have grown up watching them on tv so when parents would see the cartoon character on the advertisement they would want to buy them for their kids because of the use of their child’s favorite cartoon characters. The kids look up to the cartoon characters and would love to wear the diapers when the see that Tommy and Chuckie are on the cover. Also, it is a Huggies little movers ad so why not use characters that wear diapers that are always going on adventures? I also Capitalized the word all to emphasize that the diapers are made for all young children.
Assignment: Advertisement Using A Cartoon Character
Stars: 4
I created this advertisement on GIMP.
Step 1: Open GIMP and select File -> Open as Layers and then pick the picture you want to use for your background.
Step 2: Select File -> Open as Layers and then pick the picture you want to add to the ad.
Step 3: Click the Scale Tool button on the left side of the screen.
Step 4: Click on the image to resize and move to location you want the image to be.
Step 5: Repeat steps 2-4 to add another image.
Step 6: Click File -> Export As to save the picture.
Next I used aviary.com to add the text.
Step 1: Click to add the advertisement.
Step 2: Click the right arrow and then click the Text button.
Step 3: Add the text and resize, move, change the font, and change the color to until the text is exactly where you want it.
Step 4: Click the Apply button in the top right and then the Save button to save the advertisement.
This was based on the assignment found here (http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/advertisement-using-a-cartoon-character/).
My mind was on pies and a friend who was talking to me mentioned teen titans and I remembered this one scene from teen titans go of all things. Some would say you probably should not work hungry, but I feel like it payed off this time.
This is unfinished, but it’s a start.
Design
Listening to the course lecture on design, it was interesting to hear how much simplicity and directness plays into design, with the ability to connect or send a message being tantamount as opposed to being flowery or rich, which risks being overly obtuse. Using symbols, metaphors – things that are recognizable – aren’t necessarily the things I think about when it comes to design, and yet it makes perfect sense – tapping into people’s cultural, personal and psychological sensitivities and memories to help the designer communicate. Ira Glass’ encouragement to keep practicing was also interesting. It opened my mind to think of art and writing as more of a discipline. Although I write for a living, I typically think of it as separate from my creative work. But in this case, I suppose I can take the same mental approach to both – keep working on it, keep fine-tuning it and the work will get better.
Design Safari
Typography – I believe this ad demonstrates the juxtaposition between various types of fonts. The Disney logo is prominently displayed at the top, but the biggest headlines isn’t about anything in particular – it just says to Embrace Vacation memories in a magical type of font. The year is prominent, I suppose so you know it’s a limited time offer.But the main points get through – and your eye is drawn across several different points by differing fonts.
Color – This Trix box is full of color. Not only does it underscore the excitement the rabbit is obviously feeling for the cereal, it also shows the colors of the cereal and uses different colors for each letter in the word Frutier so your eye will be drawn there. (Maybe having a form of the word “fruit” helps convince parents to buy it?). Anyway, there’s not one bland color on this box outside of the rabbit – the name of the cereal is green to stand out from the red and the text of the tag line is in colors that match the picture of the cereal itself. This is a bold use of color that is meant to grab kids’ eyes and make them go nuts.
Rhythm/Form & Function – This is a picture of the bar upstairs at the oldest bar in America – the White House Tavern in Rhode Island. While I looked at it, I definitely got a strong sense of texture and felt there was rhythm in the way the slats echoed the backs of the chairs and how everything seemed to be very vertical (out of necessity because it’s a small space). But as my friends and I tried to guess at why the bars were on those swing-down doors in the first place, I get a sense of the form and function. We assume they are there to keep people from reaching in and grabbing drinks whenever they’d like. But the doors were clearly made in such a way as to continue the design of the chairs and mesh with the feel of the space.
Balance – this is a beautiful example of balance – the way the symbols ring the outside of the disc and are perfectly proportioned and spaced out so as to give the entire image a sense of symmetry. Although the figure in the center is not perfectly symmetrical, the fact that he is placed in the center and touches no edge provides the sense of balance.
All of these pictures were uploaded to Flickr, and after screwing around for a while, I figured out where the share link was and linked them all to the Found Examples document in the DS106 page.
Design Assignments
This one is called Valentine. This might be my favorite creation so far. I started thinking Valentine’s Day and of course, it turns to the physical. Of course I mean kisses! Hence, Gene Simmons with a pop art effect from Picadilo. Three stars. Unploaded to Flickr – DesignAssignments1619.
This one is called Advertising using a Cartoon Character. I enjoyed this one as well. I discovered that I couldn’t combine two images into one using Picadilo. Therefore, I used Microsoft paint to put the two images together, then saved that as one JPEG, re-opened it in Picadilo and raised the temperature and hue on the ascots to get them as close to Fred’s orange. (They were originally dark blue so this is as close as I could get). Put in the text, and there ya go. Using both programs definitely added to my flexibility. Three stars. Uploaded to Flickr – DesignAssignments1538
Wait – Where’d that guy come from? – three stars – DesignAssignment149
Professor Groom Poster – 4 1/2 stars – DesignAssignment1413
One Story/Four Icons
Designing posters (3 stars)
Summary
This unit has helped me see how deliberate design is meant to bring my attention to certain things – to increase beauty in the man-made world. Also, it’s given me more of an opportunity to see design as it occurs naturally.
One of this weeks design assignments was labeled, “Advertisement Using a Cartoon Character.” The goal was to, “Take an existing product or even a regular item and have a cartoon character do their best salesman impression.”
Here is my attempt:
[Worth 3 stars]
After creating this, I sadly realized how rapey this sounds. I regret everything, but not enough to go back and redo the assignment. So…um, my apologies.
How I created it:
I start by googling the initial snow white and the seven dwarves picture
Grumpy didn’t look he wanted to hanky panky that night so I cropped him out.
I opened the image in the free online version of photoshop. I then opened it a second time as a new layer, to go on top of the original image. I then clicked on the adjustment button and scrolled down to the “desaturate” option. After clicking on this, the photo on top turned to black and white. After those two steps were complete I clicked on the top photo (or the new layer photo) and chose the “add layer mask” option. I then clicked the paintbrush tool and began to add color back certain portions of the black and white photo. This is possible because the areas I brush over are basically wiping away the black and white photo on top to reveal the original colored photo underneath. After making just the dwarves and Snow White colored again, making them the focus of the photo,I then merged all the layers.
Next, I added the trojan logo. I found a logo online that had a transparent background. I opened it as a new layer on top of my Snow White photo and moved it down to the bottom right-hand corner. After that was complete, I had to once again merge all my layers together and save the photo to my desktop.
I next opened it in microsoft word to add the text on top of the photo. I still haven’t found a site where I can add outlined text so for now, word it is. I simply added wordart on top of the photo and matched the yellow in her dress to make the text blend in better.
