Personal Mind Map
For this project, we had to use hand-sketched drawings in coherence with Adobe Illustrator to make digital pictures of our Personal Mind Maps, which used a series of images and text to describe ourselves. To create our Personal Mind Maps, we first had to create a rough sketch of what we wanted our digital version to look like. I decided that my design would be focused around a maze, since I have a lot of complex aspects in my life that make me unique. Each section of the maze was related to a different category of my interests and experiences in my fifteen years of living. These ranged from sports to food to animals to music, etc. With my rough sketch, I then had to outline it with Sharpie, and scan that onto the computer so that I could edit via Adobe Illustrator. Using the Live Trace, Live Paint and Isolation Modes on the program, I was able to edit my first sketch from a colorless empty piece of paper to a lively, vibrant digital drawing. All of the imagery included in my final draft gives the audience an idea of the components of my life that mean a great deal to me, and that are close to my heart. There are also about 3-5 words included in each section of the maze that correlate with the images in the openings. To make my final product, I had to decide which of the maze openings would be most suitable for my images. I gave the more detailed images an increase in space so that I could maximize the quality in which they were displayed, and the more simple drawings would fall into smaller boxes. While everything went quite smoothly, I struggled with inputting the words into the chambers of the maze. Some words would get cut off, or the letters would not cooperate with the editing program, or I needed to rotate them to fit into the open spaces. To solve this ongoing problem, I resized some individual letters so that the entire word would be outside of the maze, or the words would intersect with the maze's lines.
This project gave us a chance to really delve deeper into our thoughts and minds and really explore our interests and hobbies. It also gave our peers a chance to get to know our personalities in greater detail, and for the Digital Arts teacher, Mr. Henry, a chance to get to know us as well. In all, I was really happy with how my final product turned out, and I cannot wait to see what this class has in store for us for the remainder of the year! |
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