Final Project Rationale

I chose Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare 2 to do my final project on because it is one of the passions that I have that I thought I could really do a good job on. I was going to do reading because I am an avid reader but I didn't see my passion for reading coming across well through technology. My image slides for the final presentation were just plain old fun to make, and I'd find myself itching to play the game when I got out of class after working on my project. I decided to focus mainly on the campaign mode of the game (story mode), as opposed to the multiplayer aspect because I felt that the campaign is more of a personal experience than playing multiplayer with millions of other players online.
Unfortunately I botched my voice recording as it wasn't on my flashdrive when I went to finish. I had planned on having the natural gun noises (in that cool percussion beat) open my project, then have my voice come in and then end with the quote on the last slide. As it turns off I still think it is pretty cool, though admittedly I could have had an easier transition from the gun noise to the quote.

Bind-in Blow-in Rationale

I used Adobe Illustrator and Quark express to do my bind-in blow-in cards. Of the two I prefered Adobe Illustrator because I found it easier to use. I had little to no difficulty finding the tools I needed in Illustrator to get the effects I wanted. One of the biggest challenges I had was finding the exact ESPN font that the original cards used. Once I stopped trying to make a cheap immitation of the font I googled "Espn font" and found a website where I could download it. With that crisis averted my other main challenge was some of the touchy work around the outside of the cards, as well as putting all the lines that are used for scanning. Not that the last part was all that hard with the pen tool but it was time consuming and tedious.
I havn't had a good opinion of Quark since we used it to make our band poster. In that assignment I tried and tried to find a way to manipulate the fire image that I had brought in to enhance the top of the poster. I was incredibly frustrated to find that when I put the poster in photoshop I was able to create the desired effect with little to no hassle. That being said using Quark for the bind-in blow-in cards wasn't all that bad. I still preffered using Illustrator but after having just done a card in Illustrator I found Quark to be a little less of a hassle.

Flickr project

Patriot Place Broshure

Online Broshure

Concert Poster

Design Rational Power Point

I have made multiple power points in my academic career, but this one is by far the one I am most proud of. I was excited to learn how to put music into a power point because previously I had only been able to put sound bytes from certain websites into my presentations. I wanted to do my presentation on an artist I liked and that I felt I could do justice to in a power point. I chose Lupe because I really enjoy his music but he isn't quite as mainstream as some other rappers. Really I was trying to do his music justice while hopefully introducing him to the class in a good light as inspire others to listen to him.
I based my color scheme off of one of the first pictures I found when begining to plan out my presentation. The green and black theme seemed to really fit, and I'm proud of the effect I gave both the sources slide and the track list slide. I found adjusting the opacity to keep the text from being obscured to be a pain.
One thing that I am very proud of was how i was able to mesh the two songs I chose. I had never used a music editing program before, but I found audacity to be easy to use and I'm proud of how it turned out. If I had had more time I would have worked through the timings of the dimming and fading animations, which irked me till the end.