Project 2 - Old School
Coming up:
I cut some paper, make a perfect cube and somehow get turned into paper.
I cut some paper, make a perfect cube and somehow get turned into paper.
Fancy going old school?
Yes? well it’s good news! For the next three weeks, we’ll be doing a project called Old School, where we will taking on a handful of tasks where we will have to do everything in person and use materials in hand over doing things digitally well, mostly.
For the first few challenges, we were tasked to create some books from a bunch of high quality paper that was bought in for us to use. They said that the pages had to be at least A5 in size and have at least 20 of them, so we used craft knifes, metal rulers (cork backed if possible) and a cutting mat so that we didn’t cut any unwanted materials such as expensive tables. The first book was to be stapled in the middle, however, I used way too thick paper and the stapler didn’t really go through which is fun, but now we know for next time!
We were tasked to create a weird cut out design of our choosing, just to test our scalpel skills really, so I went for an almost symmetrical circle cut out thing, I don’t really know how to explain it, but I thought it looked quite cool. Obviously, I now know that I could be a bit more adventurous for next time when it comes to using scalpels to create a design.
The next challenge was to create a pop out design using our now professional scalpel skills, and I went for a more mathematic attempt this time rather than going fully freehand, so I created a cm grid on the back half of the paper, Then scribbled through some squares in the hope of creating lots of squares that would come out getting bigger and bigger through to the middle, then slowly get smaller however, just after the halfway mark, my craft knife decided to depart the ruler and very kindly split through the rest of the paper that I was about to cut through, so i was only left with half of the design, which doesn’t even stand up as well as I had hoped, but we move on.
For the second week, We were tasked with creating some 3D objects, starting with a cube of 80mm by 80mm. Thankfully, this task went by with much more ease than the others, thanks to learning about nets many many moons ago at school. That being said, I still had a couple gaps here and there where the folding marks didn’t quite match up perfectly in the corners, but that’s nothing to worry about too much. For a bit of fun, I made another slightly smaller one made out of a map that I got from a charity shop, which proved to be a bit more of a challenge as it is a much thinner material, but still, it looked quite cool.
We were the tasked to create a pyramid out of paper, which also had to be 80mm high, which turned out to be more difficult that expected. I measure the base to be an 80mm square, but obviously when you fold all the triangles over, those 80 mm edges would be shorter than 80mm as they wouldn’t be up straight. So, as you can probably guess, I haven’t quite figured it out as yet, but at least the slightly shortened pyramid stands well and has actually stayed stuck on all of the edges.
Yes? well it’s good news! For the next three weeks, we’ll be doing a project called Old School, where we will taking on a handful of tasks where we will have to do everything in person and use materials in hand over doing things digitally well, mostly.
For the first few challenges, we were tasked to create some books from a bunch of high quality paper that was bought in for us to use. They said that the pages had to be at least A5 in size and have at least 20 of them, so we used craft knifes, metal rulers (cork backed if possible) and a cutting mat so that we didn’t cut any unwanted materials such as expensive tables. The first book was to be stapled in the middle, however, I used way too thick paper and the stapler didn’t really go through which is fun, but now we know for next time!
We were tasked to create a weird cut out design of our choosing, just to test our scalpel skills really, so I went for an almost symmetrical circle cut out thing, I don’t really know how to explain it, but I thought it looked quite cool. Obviously, I now know that I could be a bit more adventurous for next time when it comes to using scalpels to create a design.
The next challenge was to create a pop out design using our now professional scalpel skills, and I went for a more mathematic attempt this time rather than going fully freehand, so I created a cm grid on the back half of the paper, Then scribbled through some squares in the hope of creating lots of squares that would come out getting bigger and bigger through to the middle, then slowly get smaller however, just after the halfway mark, my craft knife decided to depart the ruler and very kindly split through the rest of the paper that I was about to cut through, so i was only left with half of the design, which doesn’t even stand up as well as I had hoped, but we move on.
For the second week, We were tasked with creating some 3D objects, starting with a cube of 80mm by 80mm. Thankfully, this task went by with much more ease than the others, thanks to learning about nets many many moons ago at school. That being said, I still had a couple gaps here and there where the folding marks didn’t quite match up perfectly in the corners, but that’s nothing to worry about too much. For a bit of fun, I made another slightly smaller one made out of a map that I got from a charity shop, which proved to be a bit more of a challenge as it is a much thinner material, but still, it looked quite cool.
We were the tasked to create a pyramid out of paper, which also had to be 80mm high, which turned out to be more difficult that expected. I measure the base to be an 80mm square, but obviously when you fold all the triangles over, those 80 mm edges would be shorter than 80mm as they wouldn’t be up straight. So, as you can probably guess, I haven’t quite figured it out as yet, but at least the slightly shortened pyramid stands well and has actually stayed stuck on all of the edges.
It is time to go through some of the tasks that I never got through and have had the time to get complete before we get assessed. This was the perfectly pristine, pen drawn 40mm square on layout paper. I did this badly before, but on this attempt, I just folded a bit A4 paper in half both landscape and portrait, then drew a perfect 40mm square in the middle, so that I could draw the perfect square over the top on the layout paper as it would see through to that page underneath it.
In terms of the other tasks I had to get done, I got around to making the first challenge’s book, which I did completely wrong but never mind, we’ll gloss over that one, and then we move onto the perfectly cut out foam board mount, which I think came out really well. I was super careful and precise to make sure it came out really well in the end and while it is simply a blue and white rectangle, it does give me some smart options to play around with if I ever need to show some clients my work in a professional way.
The third week of this paper extravaganza project sees us create a paper folding toy, which will have to be printed and made by Friday, so obviously, I have created a mood board on Illustrator to help give me some ideas, and I really liked the idea of doing something typically British, so this mood board is mostly just full of things I see as being British, from your over the top health and safety notices, roadworks lasting half a decade, run down, empty high streets and the British street furniture.
The only thing I really need to remember is that this will be a paper toy that represents us as a person and should be recognisable to other people, so I will try my hardest not to create a diversion sign or anything like that.
The only thing I really need to remember is that this will be a paper toy that represents us as a person and should be recognisable to other people, so I will try my hardest not to create a diversion sign or anything like that.
So, here is the worst collage in history, which is supposed to represent my paper toy initial idea. This will be me, most likely wearing a F1 related shirt, standing at a set of lights waiting to cross while looking at my watch to create what I believe is a very British image. I hope that the traffic light post will stand up just by cutting and folding the paper at the bottom, maybe with a passing car or something. I am fully aware that this will probably not all fit on one page of A4 but I am feeling happy enough to give it my best shot.
Right, let’s get cracking shall we? To start off, I will work on the pedestrian crossing with the ICONIC British crossing button thing that sits on a traffic light post. I have used the Pen Tool in Illustrator, which is something I will be using a lot of, to go around and build up the image using shapes to get a fairly basic outline of the machine. I don’t like to use too many colours in my work most of the time, but have used enough here to make it recognisable to anyone from Britain.
The next stage of this paper toy design is to actually finish off the traffic light, which I have done by using an image of a set of lights and by using the Pen Tool, which this time I have used a bit more line work to make it feel more like some artwork over just a simple digital outline, so I have used my knowledge of the Pen Tool to extend the lines and almost make some waves, which is something I have been practicing a lot with behind the scenes as I think they look really cool when all the colours build up an image.
So, here we go then, this is my traffic light post, pretty basic i know, but I’m hopeful that it will look the part by the end of the week!
So, here we go then, this is my traffic light post, pretty basic i know, but I’m hopeful that it will look the part by the end of the week!
This is pretty much an Unsplash appreciation post as it has helped me countless times in the past few years and I know I will be using it again in projects to come. The photos of the taxis are for what I will post next up, but still, it shows how high quality all of the photos are on this website and are really helpful to use in projects requiring imagery.
After talking about the taxi images, let’s put them to good use. I started off by cutting out the taxi and the road using the Polygonal Selection Tool in Photoshop, then dragging that over into Illustrator, where I would then crop it to just about wider than this blue rectangle that I have added in to use as what will cut out and fold up, and then use the Gaussian Blur Tool to allow the image to blur just that little bit, enough to make it feel like it is driving past you. I then just made sure that there was no blue from the background seeping through the now blurred image by scaling it that bit bigger. This is now ready to go alongside the crossing that I will be drawing out in Illustrator shortly.
So, the next step was to create my actual character for the paper toy as this is supposed to represent us after all. While doing some Googling, I found this quite simplistic net of some superhero and just felt like this sort of thing would sit in my paper toy really well as it saves space on the actual paper and would be easier for people to make at home. So, I used the Pen Tool in Illustrator to recreate a similar net design, then went in on layers below to create the actual character of myself. In terms of making it look somewhat like me, I used a photo of me to create the face after using the Pen Tool once again, then added my lucky blue jeans along with a Formula 1 T-shirt as that is pretty much my life summed up. To make the character not too small for the design, I turned it about 45º just so it can be scaled up as much as possible without going over the edges, which also gives me more space for some design work above.
The next step for my design was going to just be whack it on an A4 sheet of paper and print it off, however, as I’m on a Graphic Design course, it makes sense to create a logo for it all right?
So, I opened up Illustrator once again and went with the name ‘British Patience’ as it perfectly represented the paper toy that I had come up with. Like I said in the comic project, I just type in the name of my new brand, and then just play around with a bunch of different fonts to see what ones can stand out the most.
The font that I liked the most turned out to be an Italic one, which I rarely use to be honest, however it stood out to me in the crowd of other fonts, and then I had the idea of having it at a slight angle, so the the letters were somewhat upright, but the word continued up, only a little bit though otherwise it could be too difficult to read.
The next step after selecting my font was to start playing around with different objects and shapes to see if I can come up with anything quite interesting. The first attempts were quite literally just a little narrow triangle underneath which just looked pointless, and then I had the idea of whacking the Union Flag behind the text, because what is more British than indulging the true Britishness by sticking the Union Flag over everything to make sure people know that it is from Great Britain. I made a vector Union Flag from an image off of Google, then used different lines with the Shape Builder Tool in Illustrator to get a flag that just sits above the text and allows the both to stand out.
The overall logo, considering I did it all in about an hour, maybe 30 minutes more, came out quite well in my opinion, as it suits the project and the idea of a British paper toy. I’m sure it’ll fit quite nicely on the sheet above the net of my paper toy.
So, I opened up Illustrator once again and went with the name ‘British Patience’ as it perfectly represented the paper toy that I had come up with. Like I said in the comic project, I just type in the name of my new brand, and then just play around with a bunch of different fonts to see what ones can stand out the most.
The font that I liked the most turned out to be an Italic one, which I rarely use to be honest, however it stood out to me in the crowd of other fonts, and then I had the idea of having it at a slight angle, so the the letters were somewhat upright, but the word continued up, only a little bit though otherwise it could be too difficult to read.
The next step after selecting my font was to start playing around with different objects and shapes to see if I can come up with anything quite interesting. The first attempts were quite literally just a little narrow triangle underneath which just looked pointless, and then I had the idea of whacking the Union Flag behind the text, because what is more British than indulging the true Britishness by sticking the Union Flag over everything to make sure people know that it is from Great Britain. I made a vector Union Flag from an image off of Google, then used different lines with the Shape Builder Tool in Illustrator to get a flag that just sits above the text and allows the both to stand out.
The overall logo, considering I did it all in about an hour, maybe 30 minutes more, came out quite well in my opinion, as it suits the project and the idea of a British paper toy. I’m sure it’ll fit quite nicely on the sheet above the net of my paper toy.
After all of this work, I am hoping to have redeemed myself after the not so great paper work over the past couple of weeks. This is the final paper net for the paper toy for this weeks task and I think it looks smashing, especially now that I have gone in, added the new logo and some user friendly text and instructions for people to use when making it in real life.
We turn to the real world now, and as you can see, I have printed the final net out, which looks nice and professional on thick paper, and then I went in with a craft knife to slowly and carefully cut out all of the nets. In terms for the character, it was pretty basic, but it still represented me and worked quite well which is good, and then the background... The background worked really well apart from one colossal part, behind the traffic light. While I quite liked the thought of it showing a passing car, I’m not too sure it looked right only having a tiny part of a car what stands up with the traffic light, so that was a shame that it didn’t work, and then for the road and buildings, they just didn’t really line up with the background, which was kind of the reason I went for the whole 3D setup of the toy, but overall, it looks really cool and I feel like I have redeemed myself after a couple weeks of not so good paper cutting and tasks.