Los Angeles, California.

San Diego, California.

Mission Beach, California.

My One-Week Visit to SoCal

So I just got back from California last night after spending one amazing, perfect week in San Diego and LA. I have never been to Los Angeles before and the city instantly stole my heart. EVERYTHING about that town is perfect. There is so much to do and see, and the city is so live! LA is up and running 24/7, like me! If you ask me, Los Angeles is the city that never sleeps! I got to see some of the most high-end and posh shopping centers that I have ever laid eyes on! I got a first-class tour (from my boyfriend :) of some of the most beautiful SoCal neighborhoods (in "the hills"), and of course, I got to eat at a lot of really cool restaurants (shout-out to our night at Street, if you're reading this, Morgan!). It was wonderful, to say the very least. Most importantly, I was able to meet with a potential employer...sort of. I have been trying to get an internship in LA this ENTIRE school year, and out of some heaven-sent-miricle, I am ecstatic to announce that I got the internship! :) It would be in Century City, which is near or in Beverly Hills? Maybe? I couldn't be a happier girl! Now I just need to secure a place for me to stay, and I can call myself Cali-bound :) The other significant portion of this trip was three hours south of LA, in San Diego. Here, I attended the American Chemical Society National Conference. It was SO cool- the ultimate nerd-fest. I got to see some of the world's leading chemical companies advertise their newest products and recruit new chemists to work for them. I got to see the "demos" (basically realllllllllllly upscale science projects) of chem. students from all over the nation. My ACS chapter from UT presented a demo and did really well; for anyone who cares, the demo was on polymers and how the are created/used in green chemistry. There were lots of events that I attended in this three-day conference such as dinners, awards ceremonies, speakers, etc. I also did  A LOT of shopping down there (Juicy Couture for my sister!) and am now the most bankrupt girl in all of Toledo. Pictures from the trip, and lots more stories and details to come!

Typography & Text-Based Art!

The following two images were converted to basic ASCII using glassgiant.com; it is a senior portrait of myself, and when it was at its original, blown-up size, it was nearly impossible to define the image. After reducing the image size down to this, it is a lot more clear what the picture is. You can definitely tell that this is me in the picture :) The photograph below is also a senior picture of me, and the further you zoom out of the photograph, the more it looks like the original image, except in grayscale!

 This image was also converted to ACSII, however I used the "more powerful" software on text-image.com. I think that you certainly can see a significant difference between this picture and the previous two images; this one displays a lot more detail, and the text is a lot more definitive of the lines and shading in the photograph!

The following image was also produced on text-image.com, but it was converted to the HTML format. It is supposed to be a picture of me standing at the top of a flight of stairs. What I really liked about this format was how rich the coloring was! Each individual letter is colored a different shade to represent all of the lighting, in detail, in the photograph- VERY cool!

This is my final image made on text-image.com and I made it using the Matrix format. It is supposed to be a picture of me and a cat; I thought that Matrix was pretty cool because it only uses green and black to depict a fairly detailed image.

 

The following three images are my Tagxedo creations! I LOVED this website! Very scrapbook-ish! Haha, I would totally use creations on this website for t-shirt designs, birthday cards, posters- virtually anything! The images produced are very attractive and interesting- you can't help but look at them! I made three pictures on this website representing my cat, my trip to California that I will be taking in a few days, and this warm spring weather that I have been enjoying. These are all screenshots, and you can see this in the third image that captured the effect of my mouse scrolling over a word on the image :)

Last, but certainly not least, are my Textorizer images! This first one was made on TextorizerI, and n matter WHAT I did to the settings, the image was never able to be defined. This is the best picture that I could produce, unfortunately. The words never seemed to completely fill the open space, which I thought was weird. Anyways, I took a screenshot, including my setting details and the original photograph, so that you can see what I did and see what it is SUPPOSED to look like lol.

This picture was made on Texterizer II, and I liked how it turned out A LOT better than the first program, because it filled the entire image with color- no empty space! However, for some reason it would not allow me to adjust the opacity and bring it down to 0- which was very strange. You can still see the basic outline of my original image behind the text and I wish I could have produced an image composed entirely of text!

Finally, I made an image out of lines- using Excoffizer! I liked this program the best because it was a lot of fun to play with the settings and adjust the spacing of the lines- you can see the difference between my first and second image. The only difference is the amount of space between each line that composes the photograph- this alone changes the image SO much! I thought that it was an interesting program to play with and I think that a lot of different artwork can be produced using this!

Scribbler, Scribbler Too, and Flame Paintings :)

(This picture was made using Scribbler. It was my first attempt with the program and I made it by drawing a few simple, random lines across the canvas and then beginning the "Scribbler", and the program was "scribbling", I constantly changed the color of the "paintbrush" and had the transparency and thickness of the lines set to "random" so it was constantly changing as my picture was being created. I think that overall, this program may be a little bit tricky to use if you have a very specific image in mind, that requires a lot of detail. This program randomizes the placement and webbing of multiple lines so I think it could be very challenging to create a precise drawing with it.

This picture was also made Scribbler; with my second attempt at the program, I tried to make a picture that actually represented a tangible object. In this case I tried making a flower, starting with a few simple lines shaped like flower petals. I had the transparency and thickness of the lines set to "random", as I did before  and constantly changed the color, altering between different "cool" colors.

This was the first image that I created on Scribbler Too. What I liked about this program is that it was a lot less random than Scribbler and I was better able to predict the outcome of my drawing. I really liked the "webbed" appearance of the brush a lot more than the "finger painting" look of the Scribbler brush. This drawing is obviously not of anything particular, but I liked how it demonstrates the basic function of the Scribbler Too program.

This image was my second attempt with Scribbler Too and this time I was able to change the thickness and intensity of the "webbing" to create a specific image. I really liked how this program automatically attempts to connect all lines drawn; this created some very interesting blending effects when I would switch in between colors. In my image, the grass, the sky, and the moon, are all two-toned, and the "webbing" helped mesh the two colors together. I thought it was really cool and personally think that with the right creativity and artistic abilities, one could make masterpieces using this software!

Here is my first image from Flame! I personally loved this program a lot more than Scribbler and Scribbler Too, because I am not an artist (at all) and this program literally creates the art for you! It was really fun working with a medium like this; I certainly never have before! I decided that you can use "painting with fire" to convey ANY emotion, not just anger! With the Flame program, you can adjust the color of the flame, the intensity, the thickness, and the blurriness of the "fire", which allows you to create virtually anything. If I had to pick an "emotion" that I was depicting I guess I would call this one excitement, simply because that's the feeling I get from this picture :)

This is my second drawing on Flame; this picture uses less "fire"-like brush strokes, rather, it uses brush strokes that look more like colored light. I thought that this program was really neat because it really isn't just "fire" that you can use as your medium, it's "light". I basically created streams of red and green light reflecting off of one another against the black canvas. It reminds me of a really intense "Northern Lights" scene :)

California-Bound!

Lucky me! I am flying into Los Angeles in exactly two weeks! I will spend two days in LA, and will be meeting with an attorney to discuss a potential internship for this summer (internship in LA = MY DREAM!). I will then go to San Diego where I will spend two days shopping and laying out on the beach, followed by two days attending the American Chemical Society National Conference! I will then take a train back to LA and will fly back to Toledo the next morning; this is going to be the most incredible vacation/business trip I have ever taken! I don't think I've ever been so excited for anything! Wish me luck!

My Video Mash-Up!

MEOWWWWWWWW!!!! This is the video-mash-up that I made for my digital media art class!! The song is "Shake It Out" by Florence + The Meowchine (remixed with my own original beat!). Inspurration fur this video comes from my obsession with cats, as well as those depressing Unicef/"Feed the Children" commercials that always seem to play late at night! I wasn't mocking any world issues here; I was only trying to raise awareness of the challenges that felines face in this country every day :)