Cereal Box Design

April Arevalo
- ITA Tech Instructor -

Elements of graphic design can be found everywhere. What better way to teach the students about all the elements of graphic design than by making themselves into what, I hope, gives them the copious energy they have every Saturday morning; a cereal box.

The purpose of this project was to advertise each student in a complete styling. The students didn't necessarily have to be a cereal product, but some students did get creative by adding many aspects of them as a real cereal brand.

The cereal box was split up with each session focusing on a different part, and mastering the same tools that could be applied to the entire cereal box.

Front of the Cereal box:
On this side, the students created digitized self-portraits of themselves. The main tool used for this was the pen tool, a very useful but challenging tool. The students learned very quickly that, while frustrating, this tool can create great, detailed artistry. Starting with a picture of themselves, the students essentially traced over the picture to recreate the image. Still, they would tell you that it is not as easy as it seems. The pen tool requires a keen eye, an understanding of anchor points of curvature of a line, and the use of layers.

After practicing this tool several times, the students were able to tame it and create digitized versions of themselves that looked great.This is a picture of a student, as a final digitized image.

Back of the Cereal box:

In this section, the students created a typographical map of their neighborhood and nearby areas. This section again focused on the pen tool but introduced new elements such as a "clipping mask" and "type to path" tool. The students really developed their pen tool skills in this section. In order to make a typographical map, the students would outline the shapes present in the image of their neighborhood. Then, they would use a new layer to write text of the area they were covering up, i.e. parks and street names. Then, selecting both layers, they would create a clipping mask that would cut the text to the shape they outlined and color it as the shape was colored. The students repeated this for each section of their map.

This is a map of a student's neighborhood entirely made up of text.

Sides and Panels of the Cereal box:

After giving the students a very structured front and back of their cereal box, they were given more freedom for the rest of the box. Keeping in mind that they were creating a cereal box, many of the students created "nutritional facts," based on what makes them who they are. They also started to think of images that could portray aspects of importance to them, such as religion, school spirit, and other things of interest.

These are the side panels for another student's cereal box. She chose to draw her journey at ITA on one side of her cereal box.

For the final result of the cereal box, the students were asked to think about color schemes throughout the box and overall presentation. They are portraying themselves and need to think about what makes something aesthetically pleasing. The majority of students still have some tweaking to do, in order to make their boxes as presentable as possible. In using a website known as "dropbox" the students are able to work on their projects at home and can send us a complete cereal box that they put time into and would be proud to show.

The students came a long way and have begun to understand what it takes to make a complete piece of work/art. This is a great structure for the projects to come in their ITA career.

COMING SOON:
Below are some photos of the actual cereal boxes! We displayed them at this year's 12th Annual Holiday Luncheon:

Introducing: After Effects

April Arevalo
- ITA Tech Instructor -

After Effects is a complex program that has endless possibilities of what can be created. I tend to focus a lot on text, not just what the text means but also the aesthetic feel of the text. This session I wanted the students to become familiar with the navigation and some of the functions of After Effects. The plan for this session was to give the students a basic structure of how to do a space warping text. Once the structure was complete, the students had the freedom to enhance their animation with a variety of options.

Although I felt the structure was confusing at times the students had no trouble in asking for clarification and getting back on track. Because of the complexity of this software, I had to be pretty strict about exact values for many parts of the project. However, the students were clever and had their own interpretations. They successfully came up with different text paths, styles, and compositions. This picture is a sample of a movie title as it enters the time echo effect that causes it to look like it is warping.

Once the structured part of the lesson was complete and the students were introduced to backgrounds with masks and the particle world the creativity really began to flow. Approaching these two elements in more of a broad sense while still highlighting major components really played to a key aspect when using After Effects. Creating effects that are visually engaging in this program calls for experimenting or simply just playing around with the effects. The difficult part is that it requires a lot of computer processing power, so it can be a little slow going to experiment and see the results right away.

As the students dove into adding backgrounds and different particle elements it became clear that the structured part was needed and that this freedom would add another level of complexity to what the students had already made. This student made something simple look very cool and colorful.
Overall the students engagement, curiosity, patience, and creativity really made this session more than I had ever anticipated. Hopefully since this was the first session ever to use the program After Effects when other sessions are offered the students will be excited to learn and create what ever the focus of that session happens to be.

Annual ITA Halloween Costume Contest delivers more treats than tricks

Alison Wilson

- ITA ACT and College Prep Instructor -

Each year, ITA encourages students to look deep within themselves to come up with the BEST Halloween costumes possible. While few students participated this year, the costumes did not disappoint. Not only did these students have the opportunity to go trick-or-treating in each of their classes, but ITA staff was on the lookout for the most creative, fun, inspiring, or well-executed costumes.

Without further adieu, I present to you the Halloween Costume Contest participants of 2011!

This student sported the unofficial uniform of the US Women's soccer team.

Our very own Party Rock Anthem Robot!

The classic masquerade mask for a sophisticated costume. Also, she loves trees...

It was impossible not to smile when walking past Dipsy, the green Teletubby.

Here is a very convincing crusader, complete with sword and chainmail!

I’m not even sure who this ninja was; this costume was just that good!

Wow! Nice interpretation of Raggedy Ann, red Converse and all! You rock!

Arrrrrr, mateys! This here be another ITA student as a pirate!

We even had a mime costume. And, some nice miming talent along with it!

With so many AWESOME costumes, it was difficult for staff to choose the winners. In the end, it all came down to just a few votes…

Our runner-up is a TIE between Dipsy and Raggedy Ann. Each of them will receive a $20 Best Buy gift card!

This year’s costume contest winner is the robot from LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” music video. He will receive an iPod shuffle and a $15 iTunes gift card!

A huge thanks to Mary, Sarah, Brianna, Brenna, Ian, Ninoska, Adrian, Josh K., and Islam ! You will each receive a raffle ticket for the End-of-Semester prize raffle!!

Photos by: A.J. Daughtry Krill

Adobe Illustrator - Class of 2014

Chou Thao
ITA Technology Instructor

The Adobe Illustrator class allows students to take a sketch of their own (done with paper and pencil) and digitize it onto a computer using Illustrator. This doesn't mean that someone who wants to learn to use the program has to be a great drawer or artist. Illustrator has a bunch of tools for artists and non-artists alike to make professional and interesting graphics for tons of purposes, from print to web!

The Illustrator class was split into two classrooms taught by Chou, Cristina, Marc, and Tenzin. The first project's main goal was for students to get comfortable with the program and get a feel of how it works. The assignment was to create your very own penguin character using pre-made symbols of penguin parts. The results were amazing as students used their creativity to make unique penguins.

As the class went on and students learned the various tools the program offered they realized the difference between vector images and raster images. In Illustrator vector images can be made from raster images by utilizing the live trace tool. Students were put into groups of four and asked to use this tool to create a "four seasons" piece. They "live traced" one picture and color it in with the colors of the season they were assigned from their groups. The four seasons project was interesting because of how each student portrayed the same season with their unique perspective.

The students were learning Adobe's CS5 and they got a chance to test out the new perspective tool. Using the perspective tool students were able to create a city block with two different angles and create a 3D effect. Students picked up this tool very quickly and created some nice work.

To show what the students gained from the Illustrator class, they were asked to create a web site layout from scratch using Illustrator. This was a little bit of a challenge because the students have had very little experience in how websites are created, but after a few examples ideas started to pop.

MS Excel Last Day!

Paul Christopher
ITA Technology Instructor

This morning’s session was Elizabeth’s first session in a month, so she had a bunch of stuff to do in catching up with the students. We talked about what we did between sessions, and what our plans were for the Thanksgiving holiday. Anny is participating in a Hmong New Year celebration, but she’s not sure if she should sing or not (of course, she should.)

Then, once that was finished, Elizabeth led the class through a review of what we studied last session. Also, she brought cookies! In honor of the last day of Excel. Since we’re working on an Excel Game, which can be really, really complicated, (but also really, really fun) there were A LOT of fires to put out. Add in the network problems we were having (dropped connections, no available connections, etc.) and everything was slow-going, but the students did a great job of rolling with the punches and getting everything done. There were some really interesting issues, such as naming the right columns the right thing, and remembering to SAVE OFTEN, and everyone did a great job of helping each other out. Since Elizabeth and Paul had their hands full, team effort was really important to make sure everybody got to where they needed to be!

Eventually, and with a lot of hard work, most of the class got to where they needed to be. The game was played, and many battles were fought and lost. Keke and Jose came out winners, as did Tenzin and Jaylah. More importantly, it was a blast seeing the culmination of everyone’s hard work. Way to go, team!