Gunsmoke

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B648BUKwsfL2NTljMTU3MWEtMTlhYS00MWUwLTk0MWYtNWJkMjUzMzQ2ODVh&hl=en

This is my final project in Final Cut Pro. I got the dailies of a fight scene in the old show Gunsmoke and edited them to make a straight sequence. My overall concept for editing the sequence was to make it as believable and continuous as possible. There were a number of different shots of the entire fight, so there was definitely a lot of material to choose from. I ended up using the entire longshot of the fight, with close-ups of certain moments to enhance the drama. I used primarily straight cuts (with one wipe transition), so I made sure to time the cuts on an action (like a punch or a fall), so the continuous nature of the scene was clear. I also added sound effects (like slaps and punches) that I found on freesound.org. Making the timing of these sound effects accurate was difficult, but I used the frame-by-frame arrow keys and markers in order to make a very specific placement of the sound. At the end I added titles, with text superimposed over the final shot. To polish off the movie, I found a old-timey news music clip from the stock selections in GarageBand to end with a heroic feeling. 

Final Cut Pro: Graphic Match Project

http://hills.ccsf.edu/~agomez41/agomez_graphic_match.mov

In this project, I chose three different shapes, found two or more videos containing each shape and cut/edited the videos to match the shapes.

I used many more of the feature of Final Cut Pro in this project. I used the motion editing vectors to achieve zoom-in, rotation and rescaling, so each shape would be in the same location in the frame and a similar size. I also used a wave filter to match the movement of two shapes.

I would have liked to add one song to the entire video, but I ran out of time. Perhaps I will find an appropriate song and go back to add it later.

Final Cut Pro Cut to Rhythm Project

http://hills.ccsf.edu/~agomez41/agomez_rhythm.mov

This is my first attempt at using Final Cut Pro to edit video. The assignment was to find two or more videos and cut back and forth between them according to the rhythm of a song. I chose the song "17 Years" by Ratatat, because it has a solid beat on which to base the videos. The song is rather intense and epic, so I chose videos to express more intense content, namely the juxtaposition of wealth, capitalism, nuclear power and poverty.

In doing this project, I became familiar with using the viewer, canvas and timeline windows to understand which part of the video I was manipulating. I also used basic tools, such as the razor blade and markers, to cut the video sequence to the beat of the song.

Final Flash Animation

http://hills.ccsf.edu/~agomez41/flash/dog_ball.swf

This is my final flash project, a minute-long movie with two characters, sound effects, music and credits. I started this project by making a storyboard with 12, 5-second scenes. This process helped me to layout what I wanted to include in the entire story and about how long I thought each development in the story would take.

The animating was very slow-going at first, but once I got the hang of how I was going to animate each of my character's bodies, it became a bit easier. I used individual layers for the facial features of both characters (a dog and a ball), so I could make facial expression to show emotion, since I was not using words. I also made use of motion tweens to create the bouncing ball animation, as well as the squash-and-stretch property of animation to make the bouncing believable. I then made another layer for all of the sounds and lined the keyframes up with the character movements.

The story is very simple, involving a dog and a rubber ball. There is a brief conflict, which is resolved at the end to the tune of one of my favorite, up-beat songs.

15-second Flash Animation

http://hills.ccsf.edu/~agomez41/flash/doggy.swf

In this Flash animation, I worked with just the face of one character to create a 15-second movie showing a few different emotional expressions. I put each of the different facial features on a different layer so I could manipulate them independently of each other. I then found sounds on freesound.org and added those to another layer, using keyframes to line it up with the animation timing.

Bouncing Ball

http://hills.ccsf.edu/~agomez41/flash/bouncing_ball.swf

This is my first effort at using Adobe Flash CS5 to create a simple animated movie. I used the basic circle and rectangle tools to create the ball and the ground on separate layers. I also used the brush tool to draw a face on the ball, creating an element of emotion in my basic animation. My movie had a framerate of 24 fps, so I decided to make the bouncing ball take 1 second, or 24 frames. So I had the ball hit the ground at frame 12. I made the ball stretch out when it hit the ground by using the Transform tool.

Four Seasons Website

http://hills.ccsf.edu/~agomez41/four_seasons/index.html


This is my first effort at using Adobe Dreamweaver to create a website. The basic design of the page is a home page with four corresponding pages for each season. I included an image, a haiku and a short video on each season's page.

I wanted my site to be easy to navigate, so I made a horizontal navigation panel by using inline lists of links. I added styling to the links to give them a colored, boxed background.

For each season's page, I found an image of trees from each season on the web. For the home page, I wanted to include all of these images, but they were all different sizes and resolutions. I used Adobe InDesign to resize all the images and combine them into one image. I made an image map around each picture on the home page, so clicking on the image would lead to the corresponding season page.

In each page, I included a haiku about each season. I wanted the poem to appear over the image, so I used div tags to create a transparent box.

I also included a video in each page. I found the original videos at archive.org and used Quicktime 7 to select short clips from each video.

Four Elements Website

http://hills.ccsf.edu/~agomez41/four_elements/elemental_living.html 

This is my first effort at writing HTML to make a full website. I had a lot of fun with this assignment and tried to briefly incorporate most of the different aspects of web design that HTML offers. My concept for the website was to include a page for each element and how I interact with that element in my life.

For the basic design of the website, I used a combination of horizontal and vertical frames. I made two horizontal frames to have a fixed heading for the site. I then divided the lower horizontal frame into two vertical frames and set the left frame as a navigation frame. On the navigation frame, I put links to the four elements pages plus the home page. When a visitor clicks on the links, the corresponding pages appear on the right vertical frame. Thus, I have a fixed heading and navigation frame, so the visitor can go to any page in the site at any time.

For each element, I used an image of myself interacting with that element and a brief explanation of how I feel about each element. For the Air and the Water element pages, I used tables to align the text and the picture, because I wanted the entire page to be viewable from a regular sized browser window. For the elemental symbols which I used as links in the navigation frame, I used Adobe Illustrator to create small, uniform vector symbols. The home page symbol I found online.

I also included two sounds, one of waves and one of fire crackling, on the respective elemental pages. I found these sounds at freesound.org. I embedded the sounds, and using the autostart, loop, height and width attributes, I made it so the sounds would start immediately upon loading, loop continuously, and the controls would not be visible (because I didn't like how it looked).

I also used a little bit of CSS on the navigation frame to make the links appear black and un-underlined.

Final Illustrator Invitation

I made this flyer for my mother's middle school band class, and it will be posted around the school and sent to hundreds of parents and sponsors. My idea was to create a clean, easy to understand flyer that is visually appealing to middle school students. I used a large font with a red fill, thicker stroke, and bulge adjustment to create a Dr. Seuss-esque title that really grabs the eye and evokes a fun feeling. I included a vector image of a saxophone that I found on the web. Using the brush tool, I drew sweeping lines coming out of the saxophone. I then used these lines to type along a path in musical notes and text fonts. To finish off the flyer and add more cohesion, I added a small black-to-white gradient in the corner and tilted it to expand diagonally.

To identify the school and the Band organization, I wanted to create a logo that the band could use for future publications as well. The school's mascot is a panther, so I found a panther vector on the web. I liked this image because it had very clean lines and spaces that text could easily fit along with. Using the same technique as in the flyer, I added musical notes and text.

Real Final Self Portrait

I wasn't quite satisfied with my first "final" self portrait, so in my free time I went back and made another copy that was more what my original concept had been. The basic steps that I took to create this version were:

• When I restarted the project, I set the document to 8 bit, rather than 32 bit color, so the colors and layers did not have to be flattened when I saved as a jpeg.
• I used a combination of the Magic Wand and the Magnetic Lasso tools to select around the red/purple drawing, so the white background from the scan wasn't part of the layer.
• I used the Magnetic Lasso tool to select the round red part of my drawing. I then copied that to select the same size and shape around the picture of my face in the ocean.
• I adjusted the levels, brightness and contrast to make my face stand out more in the picture.
• I used various text adjustments to make my text interact with the shape of the drawing.
• I used the Paint Brush tool to draw a looping line to connect all the aspects of the self portrait and to show the order of the text. 
• I then copied that layer, made it a different color, moved it down a few notches, and erased parts of it to create the highlighting of that looping line.
• I found a picture of an old, yellowed piece of paper on the Internet and put it as my background, with 50% opacity.

Final Self Portrait

In this self portrait, I combined three items from my life that I have always felt were very important and in some way speak to what is central about me. The first is something I wrote when I was 13 and have had on my wall ever since. The writing is simple and rather formulaic, but it speaks to a basic philosophy of life that I hold, which is to experience all aspects of life freely and with joy. The second item in this self portrait is a pastel drawing that I made when someone asked me to "draw my soul." The red and purple plant-like design is what I came up with, and shows my appreciation of the elegant beauty of living things. The third item in this self portrait is a picture that a friend took of me. She double-exposed a picture of me with one of the ocean, and I like the created effect of me coming out of the ocean. I then used the paint brush to draw a looping line to connect all of these items and to show the order of the text.